Question of the status of GCJ

Tue Feb 17 17:47:00 GMT 2009

Mike Purdy wrote:
> I would like to ask an admittedly embarrassing question regarding the
> status of GCJ development and its use to natively compile SWT
> applications for Linux, OSX, and perhaps Windows (though this is not an
> immediate need).
>> The embarrassing part is that I've lost track for a while now of where
> GCJ development is at, what version of java it supports, how it relates
> to Sun's open sourcing of java, and what the future development plans
> are for GCJ. I would like to pick back up soon with the possibility of
> natively compiling a couple projects, but I need to get back up to speed
> with GCJ as a whole first.
>> I appreciate any insight anyone can provide. Is natively compiling SWT
> applications still supported or feasible?

This comes up from time to time.
gcj is still there, and still works. However, it has never been tested
for compatibility with Java, and I'm sure if it were so tested, it would
fail. OpenJDK, as well as being a high-performance VM, is compatible with
Java, and so is more useful to many people.
So, most of the effort in the free software world now goes into OpenJDK.
However, people still use gcj.
The current gcj supports something vaguely like Java 1.5, but it isn't
complete AFAIAA.
Andrew.