Older blog entries for saugart (starting at number 2)

Yet another day of staying up late last night and getting up early to work on Jikes RVM. We're prepping for the 2.3.2 release. I'd like 2.3.2 to come out able to make optimizing builds using entirely free tools, not just able to make images that use the baseline compiler.

There's a bug in how the InstructionFormats.RAW file is generated when we host the build under Kaffe OpenVM. Only a few characters are different out of over 840KB. But that's enough to break optimizing builds.

In a fond hope of resolving the problem, I started to make builds using gcj and gij. Well, I just made gij 3.3.3 die with a segmentation fault; this time while building the BootImageWriter. I suppose it's comforting to know that Jikes RVM isn't the only system with issues. I can see, though, why most people who aren't ideologically committed to free software probably use the Sun JDK or a Sun-derived one (Blackdown's or IBM's).

I was interested to read about the Monotone distributed version control system in tromey's diary entry posted on Planet Classpath. It would have been nice to have had something like Monotone when the Jikes RVM CVS server went down earlier this month. I wouldn't want to trust our repository to it as the primary technology (CVS is far older and more stable) but I wonder whether we couldn't easily put together some sort of unidirectional CVS => Monotone gateway . The other direction would be difficult, of course, since CVS doesn't have Monotone's features.

So, I read that the European Commission will place obstacles in the way of Microsoft "using Windows to gain an edge elsewhere". I am excited about what this may mean for greater diversity in commonly-used software, and about the opening up of the protocols that Microsoft software uses to communicate.

Some choice quotations from the article:

  • "The commission's action will go far beyond a 2001 U.S. settlement with Microsoft over its Internet Explorer browser, which exacted concessions but let the company continue to integrate the browser with its dominant Windows operating system."

  • "That move sets up European regulators as a major roadblock to Microsoft's ambitions to use Windows to gain an edge in more technologies. Microsoft's links in its Windows XP system to mobile-phone software and instant computer-to-computer messaging are also under investigation by the commission."

  • "The commission's prospective ruling was hailed as a landmark by Microsoft competitors and others frustrated by the company's continued Windows-aided march into new markets."

  • "Mr. Monti intends to demand that Microsoft release more information about Windows"

  • "Sun [....] has been battling what it views as one of Microsoft's biggest unfair advantages -- that information passes between desktop Windows systems and Microsoft's server operating system in forms that rival products can't decode."

I've created an entry on Advogato at Mark Wielaard's (mjw) instigation.

I *think* I've got Jikes RVM's CVS repository fully restored from the crash on IBM's developerWorks OSS site last week. The mailing lists are still broken, though -- no traffic.

I have uploaded all of my changes for building Jikes RVM using Kaffe as a bootstrap VM -- they're now available in the CVS repository and will make it into the 2.3.2 release. I'm still documenting them, though.

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