gcj and jikes

Mon May 5 14:34:00 GMT 2003

Per Bothner wrote:
> 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?

Maybee a stupid question, but why not using classfile format as the
communication protocol between the frontend and GCJ backend?
That way, GCJ could just invoke jikes as an external binary during
compilation from soure. (jikes might need to be slightly modified to
write output on a pipe for example).
I can see the following advantages here:
 - The front-end compiler could easily be switched, since I would
 guess that most Java frontends output classfile code.
 - This might(?) simplify the license issues, since the frontend
 would become an independant/switchable program.
 - GCJ team could focus on enhancing the class->native path, which
 is needed/supported anyway.
Am I missing something?
Cedric