GNU Classpath 0.18 released.
We are pleased to announce a new developer snapshot of GNU Classpath.
GNU Classpath, essential libraries for java, is a project to create free
core class libraries for use with runtimes, compilers and tools for the
java programming language.
The GNU Classpath developer snapshot releases are not directly aimed
at the end user but are meant to be integrated into larger development
platforms. For example the GCC (gcj) and Kaffe projects will use the
developer snapshots as a base for future versions.
This is our first release after "The Big Merge" with GCC/GCJ. GNU
Classpath can now be used as a subdirectory of libgcj inside the GCC
tree so it will be much easier to keep GCC up-to-date with the latest
GNU Classpath developer release snapshots.
Some highlights of changes in this release (more extensive list below):
 Added GNU JAWT for awt native interface support. Datatransfer
 clipboard updated to 1.5 including support for copy/paste of
 serialized objects, images and files. Completed the org.omg
 PortableInterceptor, DynamicAny and Portable Object Adapter
 packages. Multi plaf support for Free Swing. Editing support for
 JTree and JTable. Lots of icons and look and feel improvements for
 Free Swing basic and metal themes. NIO FileChannel.map implemented
 and DirectByteBuffer put method speedups. Image loading speedups for
 awt. Support for darwin and solaris out of the box.
29 people actively contributed to this release and made 535 CVS
commits during the two months of development. diffstat since 0.17:
 994 files changed, 114744 insertions(+), 13663 deletions(-)
More details about the various changes and contributions below.
A full list of bug reports fixed for this release can be found at:
http://gcc.gnu.org/bugzilla/buglist.cgi?product=classpath&target_milestone=0.18
This release depends on gtk+ 2.4 for AWT support. But gtk+ 2.6 or
higher is recommended. Included, but not activated by default in this
release is a Graphics2D implementation based on the Cairo Graphics
framework (http://www.cairographics.org). Enabling this makes programs
like JFreeChart and JEdit start up on GNU Classpath based runtimes.
To enable this support install the cairo 0.5.x snapshot, configure GNU
Classpath with --enable-gtk-cairo.
One of the major focuses of the GNU Classpath project is expanding
and using the Mauve test suite for Compatibility, Completeness and
Correctness checking. Various groups around GNU Classpath collaborate
on the free software Mauve test suite which contains 32.000+ core
library tests. Mauve has various modules for testing core class
library implementations, byte code verifiers, source to byte code and
native code compiler tests. Mauve also contains the Wonka visual test
suite and the Jacks Compiler Killer Suite.
See for more information: http://www.sourceware.org/mauve/
This release passes 31194 out of 32253 Mauve core library tests.
Conformance reports for the included jaxp support can be found in the
doc/README.jaxp file.
GNU Classpath 0.18 can be downloaded from
ftp://ftp.gnu.org/pub/gnu/classpath/
or one of the ftp.gnu.org mirrors
http://www.gnu.org/order/ftp.html
File: classpath-0.18.tar.gz
MD5sum: c0650c257aa93eafb709553f172f0bbb
SHA1sum: 28061c750244cac4ff0151da6aba183b94b98b25
The GNU Classpath developers site http://developer.classpath.org/
provides detailed information on how to start with helping the GNU
Classpath project and gives an overview of the core class library
packages currently provided. For each snapshot release generated
documentation is provided through the GNU Classpath Tools gjdoc
project. A documentation generation framework for java source
files used by the GNU project. Full documentation on the currently
implementated packages and classes can be found at:
http://developer.classpath.org/doc/
New in release 0.18 (Sep 6, 2005)
(See the ChangeLog file for a full list of changes.)
* GNU JAWT implementation, the AWT Native Interface, which allows
 direct access to native screen resources from within a Canvas's
 paint method. GNU Classpath Examples comes with a Demo, see
 examples/README.
* awt.datatransfer updated to 1.5 with supports for FlavorEvents.
 The gtk+ awt peers now allow copy/paste of text, images, uris/files
 and serialized objects with other applications and tracking
 clipboard change events with gtk+ 2.6 (for gtk+ 2.4 only text and
 serialized objects are supported). A GNU Classpath Examples
 datatransfer Demo was added to show the new functionality.
* org.omg.PortableInterceptor and related functionality in other
 packages is now implemented:
 - The sever and client interceptors work as required since 1.4.
 - The IOR interceptor works as needed for 1.5.
* The org.omg.DynamicAny package is completed and passes the prepared
 tests.
* The Portable Object Adapter should now support the output of the
 recent IDL to java compilers. These compilers now generate servants and
 not CORBA objects as before, making the output depended on the existing
 POA implementation. Completing POA means that such code can already be
 tried to run on Classpath. Our POA is tested for the following usager
 scenarios:
 - POA converts servant to the CORBA object.
 - Servant provides to the CORBA object.
 - POA activates new CORBA object with the given Object Id
 (byte array) that is later accessible for the servant.
 - During the first call, the ServantActivator provides servant for
 this and all subsequent calls on the current object.
 - During each call, the ServantLocator provides servant for this call
 only.
 - ServantLocator or ServantActivator forwards call to another server.
 - POA has a single servant, responsible for all objects.
 - POA has a default servant, but some objects are explicitly
 connected to they specific servants.
 The POA is verified using tests from the former cost.omg.org.
* The javax.swing.plaf.multi.* package is now implemented.
* Editing and several key actions for JTree and JTable were implemented.
* Lots of icons and look and feel improvements for Free Swing basic
 and metal themes were added. Try running the GNU Classpath Swing
 Demo in examples (gnu.classpath.examples.swing.Demo) with:
 -Dswing.defaultlaf=javax.swing.plaf.basic.BasicLookAndFeel
 -Dswing.defaultlaf=javax.swing.plaf.metal.MetalLookAndFeel
* Start of styled text capabilites for java.swing.text.
* NIO FileChannel.map implementation, fast bulk put implementation for
 DirectByteBuffer (speeds up this method 10x).
* Split gtk+ awt peers event handling in two threads and improve gdk
 lock handling (solves several AWT lock ups).
* Speed up awt Image loading.
* Updated TimeZone data against Olson tzdata2005l.
* Make zip and jar UTF-8 "clean".
* "native" code builds and compiles (warning free) on Darwin and
 Solaris.
Runtime interface changes:
* All native resource "pointers" in the VM interface classes are now
 exposed as gnu.classpath.Pointer objects. This might impact runtimes
 that optimize and support java.nio.DirectByteBuffers. Creating these
 classes and accessing the contents as void * pointers for the native
 reference JNI implementation is done through the
 JCL_NewRawDataObject and JCL_GetRawData functions.
* Simplified the Class/VMClass interface.
* Removed loadedClasses map from ClassLoader. It's now the VMs
 responsibility to manage the list of defined and loaded classes for
 each class loader.
* Moved native methods from java.lang.reflect.Proxy to VMProxy.
* Added hook to VMClassLoader to allow VM to do class caching.
New Untested/Disabled Features:
 The following new features are included, but not ready for
 production yet. They are explicitly disabled and not supported. But
 if you want to help with the development of these new features we
 are interested in feedback. You will have to explicitly enable them
 to try them out (and they will most likely contain bugs). If you are
 interested in any of these then please join the mailing-list and
 follow development in CVS.
* QT4 AWT peers, enable by giving configure --enable-qt-peer.
* JDWP framework, enable by deleting the jdwp references from
 lib/standard.omit and vm/reference/standard.omit. No default
 implementation is provided. Work is being done on gcj/gij
 integration.
* StAX java.xml.stream, enable by deleting the gnu.xml.stream and
 java.xml.stream references in lib/standard.omit.
The following people helped with this release:
Aaron Luchko (Lots of JDWP work)
Andreas Tobler (Darwin and Solaris testing and fixing
Andrew Haley (gcj build speedups)
Anthony Balkissoon (Lots of Free Swing work including JTable editing)
Archie Cobbs (Build fixes)
Audrius Meskauskas (Lots of omg corba work plus testing and documenting)
Bastiaan Huisman (TimeZone bug fixing)
Casey Marshall (NIO FileChannel.map support, security and policy updates)
Chris Burdess (StAX work and gnu xml fixes)
Christian Schlichtherle (Zip fixes and cleanups)
Christian Thalinger (64-bit cleanups)
Dalibor Topic (Qt4 build infrastructure)
David Gilbert (Basic and Metal icon and plaf and lots of documenting)
Guilhem Lavaux (JCL native Pointer updates)
Ingo Proetel (Image, Logger and URLClassLoader updates)
Ito Kazumitsu (NetworkInterfaces implementation and updates)
Jan Roehrich (BasicTreeUI updates)
Jeroen Frijters (VMProxy and VMClassLoader updates, RMIClassLoader fixes)
Keith Seitz (Lots of JDWP work)
Kelley Cook (Build fixes)
Lillian Angel (Lots of Free Swing work including JTree editing)
Mark Wielaard (Clipboard implementation, build and release infrastructure)
Rainer Orth (Build fixes)
Robert Schuster (Documentation updates and beans fixes)
Roman Kennke (Lots of Free Swing work including styled text)
Sven de Marothy (Qt4 peers)
Thomas Fitzsimmons (Lots of gtk+ awt peer work)
Tom Tromey (Lots of fixes including coordinating The Big Merge)
Wolfgang Baer (GapContent bug fixes)
We would also like to thank the numerous bug reporters and testers!