gcj and jikes

Mon May 5 08:54:00 GMT 2003

> That is not what my concern is. My question is: are there or are
> there likely to be any other Free Java compilers besides Jikes that
> are likey to have/get better support for the new features? I can

Have you guys seen the Pizza compiler?
 http://pizzacompiler.sourceforge.net/
and of special interest, its "daughter compiler" GJ:
 http://www.research.avayalabs.com/user/wadler/gj/index.html
which they claim is going to be used as an implementation
reference for generics in 1.5.
I could not find any details about the license, but the SF
project page marks it with the Artistic License.
BTW, I came to know of these via the JSR 14 ("Add Generic Types 
To The Java Programming Language") page:
 http://jcp.org/en/jsr/detail?id=14
so please accept my apologies if you have already seen, evaluated
and possibly rejected it.
> > To set the ball rolling let's try to answer if the licenses are compatible or 
> > can be made compatible. If not, there's no need to discuss this topic anymore.
>> Certainly let's do that.

Jikes is released under the simple "IBM Public License":
http://oss.software.ibm.com/developerworks/opensource/license10.html
IANAL, but that license allows you to create derivative works as
you wish and imposes itself (IPL) only if you distribute the
original program - not the derivative works.
As a layman, I certainly find the Jikes source code to be far
more readable and understandable than the parse.y in the GCJ
front-end, but that could simply be because I haven't had any
experience in writing parsers beyond my undergraduate days.
My 2p.
Ranjit.