Here are some random projects for GCJ of varying complexity that I would personally like to see implemented as soon as possible:
- Generics - Although Ken Arnold says generics are a mistake, they are still very useful in my personal opinion and GCJ should be able to handle them. Of course, it would mean fixing PR9861 first.
- Assembler - a Java assembler is a very useful tool to have, especially when you want to create invalid class files to test bytecode verification. We should either get Jasmin integrated into Classpath Tools, or create one ourselves. The latter option would be eased if we could get ASM integrated into Classpath Tools via Archit Shah's work on a new RMI compiler (which is still waiting to be checked in for some reason).
- JIT Interpreter - I think QEMU's portable dynamic translation is a really nifty idea and it seems to work rather well judging by the speed at which QEMU emulates a guest operating system. This can perhaps be used by gij to implement a "real" JIT.
GCC Developers' Summit
The proceedings of the 2005 GCC Developers' Summit are now available (PDF). As usual, they make for very interesting reading. I was particularly interested in reading Vladimir Makarov's paper on the new register allocator infrastructure that he is working on since register allocation, especially for register-starved architectures like x86-32, is GCC's Achille's Heel. It seems that the new Tree-SSA infrastructure particularly aggravates the register pressure.
Dan Kegel also maintained a diary of his visit to the summit.