One of the things every Java developer can do is to test their programs with free runtime and report the results. As a Debian Developer, and Java trainer, I'd like to help Free Java Software. So I made a web page where I'll put results of running little projects for my trainees with Free JVM's. I added a page to the Java.Debian.Net's Wiki: http://java.debian.net/index.php/DebianSupportsFreeJava and added a first link to the webpage where the results are: http://people.debian.org/~avdyk/freejava/

kaffe (2:1.1.4.PRECVS5-1) unstable; urgency=low

  * New upstream release (CVS HEAD): 
    * patch from Casey Marshall make it possible to run tomcat5 with kaffe
    (closes: #281717), new upstream should also work with Linux kernel
    2.6.9 (closes: #280664).
    * Dalibor Topic fixed the build on IA64 (closes: #284177)
    * debian/patches/main.c.patch: removed (applied upstream)
  * debian/old-patches: removed because 00JNIPatch, 03SparcPatch, do not
    apply no more.
  * debian/unpatches: removed because 01Unix-JThread-_Signal_cPatch,
    02SoundPatch, do not apply no more.
  * debian/man/javah.kaffe.1: added (closes: #284034).

I got to write it somewhere or I'll forgot!

1. Mauve Test Cases (january 6 2005: nearly done!.. some more tests in internal classes) for javax.swing.text.StringContent (and write the class)


2. Update Tomcat4.1.31 in Debian (january 6 2005: done)


3. Build Tomcat5 for Debian


4. Upload GNU JMI in Debian


5. Update ArgoUML in Debian


6. Update kaffe in Debian


7. Update gjdoc in Debian


8. Update GNU JAXP in Debian

Three days without Dalibor commit on kaffe project! Give us Dalibor back!

A lot of RC Bugs on java packages were due to a kaffe problem on x86. A new kaffe package has been uploaded. It's not perfect but it's getting better and I could build all these packages, so closed some FTBFS bugs: Bug#276387, Bug#231875, Bug#275878, Bug#277139, Bug#277141, Bug#277374, Bug#279375, Bug#280904. About kaffe, there are still some tests failures: jthreads-x86: 8 of 144 tests failed; jthreads-ppc: 62 of 144 tests failed; pthreads-x86: 9 of 144 tests failed; pthreads-ppc: 19 of 144 tests failed. There are also some Debian specific bugs I have to manage, any help welcome ;-)

Yes! New snapshot upload. The zip bug on powerpc has been fixed by Riccardo Mottola, Dalibor Topic and Michael Koch so Kaffe is now in a very good shape on powerpc! Also, lot of progresses have been made in other areas (kjc, awt, swing, bug fixes,...) but it seems bugs has been introduced in GNU JAXP. We still can not run Struts on Kaffe.
What next?

• bug fixed
• build with gcc-3.4, g++-3.4, libffi3-dev
• running Struts

Monday
First cooking courses with friends. Lot of wine, lot of fun, lot of learning...
Tuesday
Cook for my wife a part of what I learnt.
Wednesday
Rest.
Thursday
Concert with the conductor Daniel KAWKA and the first prize at the highly prestigious international Queen Elisabeth Competition in Brussels in 2003, Severin von ECKARDSTEIN (piano).
Friday
Friends for diner and concert from the father of our friends (french pop-poetic songs)
Saturday
Expo at Bruxelles from Karel Appel from CoBrA. (I think I'll visit the CoBrA Museum at Amstelveen, NL soon!..)

... well, this time I was ;-) chatting with Dalibor on #kaffe, it seems the 'jar on powerpc issue' could be resolved by merging the java.util.zip code from Classpath to Kaffe. After some explanations of the build system and the location of the classes, I did merge the 'zip' code into Kaffe, build the result and it worked! Dalibor will not accept the patch 'as is' but he told me he'll try to apply a solution in a few days. I'm waiting for some other patches and will package another far better, working on powerpc kaffe snapshot.

I's been a long time!.. so I decided to take one day of Debian development. It started yesterday with tests on the kaffe package, and upload of the new:
o commons-daemon package which announce the start of the work on the Tomcat5 packaging in Debian.
I went sleeping at 3am. Today:
o libxml-commons-resolver1.1-java: resolved the CatalogManager.properties bug
o commons-daemon: import to the Alioth's pkg-java project cvs repository
o libcommons-net-java: new upstream + new debian/watch file + updated in pkg-java's cvs
o libjazzy-java: resolved the AMD64 build bug + updated in pkg-java's cvs
o libjdom-java: imported to pkg-java's cvs
o libgnuinet-java: new upstream + new debian/watch file + updated in pkg-java's cvs
o libjexl-java: new upstream + new debian/watch file + updated in pkg-java's cvs
o libgnucrypto-java: new debian/watch file + updated in pkg-java's cvs
o libgnujaf-java: new debian/watch file + updated in pkg-java's cvs
o libgnumail-java: new debian/watch file + updated in pkg-java's cvs
o libgnujaxp-java: new debian/watch file + updated in pkg-java's cvs
o updated the tomcat5 alioth's tasks

Like some Eric Schubert, Gergely Nagy, and Joshua Kwan, I made the VideoGame Test and...

I am Mario. I like to jump around, and would lead a fairly serene and aimless existence if it weren't for my friends always getting into trouble. I love to help out, even when it puts me at risk. I seem to make friends with people who just can't stay out of trouble. What Video Game Character Are You?

Free Java environments are not as full as proprietary ones... but in some cases, they are far better! After having multiple problems with IBM's proprietary JDK on Powerpc, I'm managing to speed up my transition to Free Java JDK's/JRE's.

First, there is no Java plugin for Mozilla in the latest IBM's JDK on Powerpc, there is now gcjwebplugin, running on many architectures! For several weeks now IBM's JDK (1.4.1 and 1.4.2) does not run at all on my Debian/sid powerpc. I cannot run ant, tomcat, nothing. I got a javacore_blablabla file with a lot of debug information. SableVM, gic/gcj, Kaffe and JamVM already run Ant (nearly) without problem.

The next peace I need is Tomcat4. It's now done (screenshot). The work around was to remove the xmlParserAPIs.jar and xercesImpl.jar from the tomcat4 directory (/usr/share/tomcat4/common/lib) and replace them with a symlink to gnujaxp.jar (in /usr/share/java). And nearly everything was fine (Struts does not seem to work, but all the servlet examples did work, and every JSP examples did work except two: one because the mail api was not in the tomcat classpath and the other because of an exception in org.apache.jasper.servlet.JspServlet.service... I think it was the same exception that occured with Struts.

JDEE for Emacs seems very bounded to proprietary JDK's but I'd like to investigate a little more to have it working with free JDK's as I use it for sometimes now and I'm very happy with it. Another great environment that would be cool to run is Eclipse...

Long life to Free Java! ;-)

Michael Koch told me gcjwebplugin entered Debian unstable yesterday on powerpc. Not yet available but apt-get source and rebuilt it myself just works on powerpc, thanks Michael (upstream and Debian Maintainer).

I tried it and found some bugs but I have also been surprised it works very well with an old applet. I was looking for 'etch' because I did not remember it from Toys Story and found this site: http://www.etch-a-sketch.com/html/onlineetch.htm with an 'Etch-A-Sketch' Applet. And it did work! (screenshot).

Many thanks Michael!

Soon... I promise...

After posting a screen shot from my Mozilla browser, several people asked me about the theme... The theme is called Apollo and it was made by Aaron Spuler. There are nice themes accessible from his site: MozThemes.tk

After reading the post of Casey Marshall, I read the article on Javalobby and wanna see the JDocs.com website they were talking about...

I posted a summary with comments about the bugs of Kaffe in Debian. Some are Debian related, others are related to Kaffe (upstream)... Will we be in time for Sarge?..

Sunday @ Voorhuit: 10daysoff... strong! It's the third time we go there with my best friend. First year, we saw Idjut Boys (...) and a female dj from Paris (she did kick our ass!): Clementine; second years, we were completely wet dancing with 2ManyDJ's! This year, we saw a legend: Francois Kevorkian. As far as I know, he mixed only with his computer!.. What was the soft?! It could be mixxx but I'm afraid it's something proprietary :'(... who knows? We also danced on Luke Vibert (also known as Wagon Christ - last album: sorry i make you lush). He played music only with his Apple Powerbook 15"! What a live! Excellent!.. but what was the software?.. Rosegarden4? Ardour? The two lasts are in Debian... mixxx isn't yet. By the way, I got a lot of things to learn with Linux and Sound(s)... I hope a good start will be the OpenJay.org portal...

kaffe in testing
Kaffe entered to testing last night! This is a great news because a lot of the effort in MovingJavaToMain was based on building these java packages with Kaffe. Another good news is that a lot of these packages can now be build with SableVM (which is also in testing). We have two powerful free java virtual machines in main and in testing. Of course, there is also gcj/gij and a new virtual machine has just enter the pool, packaged by Michael Koch: jamvm.
libservlet2.3-java in main
The other great thing yesterday was the move of libservlet2.3-java from contrib to main. This will make it possible to move approximatively 5 packages from contrib to main!

Four more Java packages have reach Debian main... libservlet2.3-java is in the queue... http://java.debian.net/index.php/MovingJavaToMain

I'm glad to see a lot of people helping kaffe to build on most of the Debian arches. The new kaffe package is in the archive (thanks to ftpmasters and thanks to Doogie!), its design is more flexible and it's more easy to build it. Kaffe builds now on IA64, S390 and hppa (and of course i386 and ppc). Sparc and mipsel may follow...

I'm still waiting for libcommons-pool-java to enter in the pool in main, then I'll be able to move 3 more java packages from contrib to main.