building gcj on OS X (also AWT)

Sun May 23 16:34:00 GMT 2004

On May 22, 2004, at 3:13 PM, Tom Tromey wrote:
>>>>>> "John" == John Gabriele <john3g@bestweb.net> writes:
>> John> I'd like to build gcc 3.4.0 on Mac OS X 10.3.3. In particular,
> John> I want gcj, hopefully with whatever AWT/Swing comes with it,
> John> just so I can write command line and also simple GUI user apps.
>> Great. I read through this thread, and I just have a few comments to
> make.
>> John> Also, is GCJ's AWT currently the best option (vs. Swing) to do
> John> a simple GUI?
>> AWT is definitely more advanced than Swing at this point. However,
> even AWT is not very complete.
>> Note that AWT work is ongoing. Tom Fitzsimmons and David Jee in
> particular have been doing a lot of work in this area. How complete
> the support is will depend on the precise snapshot you pick up.
>
I'm glad to hear the AWT implementation is going along so well.
Swing is so enormous. It would be nice to at least have a small
subset of Swing, just so folks could get some basic widgets in
a window and maybe do some drawing. That's all I need it for,
and I suspect there's a lot of folks in the same boat as me.
> I believe Tom's jhbuild work will check out the "GUI branch", which
> is where development on AWT and Swing takes place. Here's some
> information on that:
>> http://people.redhat.com/fitzsim/gcj-and-jhbuild.html
>> I have no idea whether jhbuild will build gcj on Mac OS X.
>
Hmm... so, this "GUI Branch" (containing what there is of the
AWT/Swing implementation) is separate from GCJ?
I've read that GCJ and Classpath are now working together, so
I'd expect the newest AWT/Swing stuff to come from either the
GCJ site, or else the Classpath site
http://www.gnu.org/software/classpath/downloads/downloads.html
?
Given the regular work being done on AWT/Swing, an easy way
to update your system to the latest-and-greatest would be
fabulous. I'll have to read more about jhbuild.
>> I know you didn't ask about this, but another nice way to build GUIs
> with gcj is to use the java-gnome package. This is a set of Gtk (and
> Gnome, etc) bindings for Java.
>
Ah, here we are: http://java-gnome.sourceforge.net/
Thanks for offering the information. :) It looks great.
I currently don't have much time for hacking around getting
this sort of stuff working (which is one reason I'm using
Java (instead of C++) and Apple's J2SE SDK on OS X ATM).
Also, I know a little AWT/Swing and like it well enough.
On top of that, it's nice to be able to send my own Java
stuff to friends using Mac/Windows and them be able to run
it.
>> John> Will AWT only work with X (and not Quartz)?
>> We currently have two peers: the plain xlib peers and the Gtk peers.
> The xlib peers have minimal functionality and sort of limp along,
> usually building but not really tested except by Scott Gilbertson.
> The Gtk peers get a lot more attention and are much more complete.
>> We would welcome folks wanting to write Quartz (whatever that is :-)
> peers, or Windows peers, or whatever else.
>> Tom
>
Thanks for the info. If I want to stick with OS X for a while,
I think my next step is to find out about installing GTK+.
Is Fedora 2 currently the distro with the most up-to-date
Java/GCJ/AWT/Swing support?
---J