URLClassloader and native objects

Sat Jun 12 22:37:00 GMT 2004

Andrew Haley wrote:
> Before you go any further: have you read our paper about the new ABI?
> See http://people.redhat.com/lockhart/.gcc04/MasterGCC-2side.pdf.
> It's the last paper.
>> It seems that what you're trying to do overlaps with this work to a
> large extent.
>> Andrew.

This looks good! I guess that the problem was identified and has been 
worked on for years already.
Andrew, if you don't mind a few questions:
- I read that a lot of ABI work has been done already. In the case of 
custom classloaders... is the current codebase able to load 'already 
natively compiled' classes, or will it load VM bytecode, then compile 
it? I'm thinking in terms of the 'defineClass' method of 
java.lang.ClassLoader, which seems to be the central point for loading 
class data. Will you be able to load native code via this method, under 
the new ABI?
I know there isn't much of a difference but I'm particularly interested 
in finding a way to have GCJ load already compiled classes from .java 
source, as well as from .class files (JIT style), so that I could take 
advantage of the better compiler optimizations gained from .java 
compilation.
- Do you have any roadmap / documentation on development plans for the 
new ABI? I am wondering what needs to be done yet, and curious as to 
what has already been completed. I'm interested in helping out some... 
if its possible.
- Sal