Classpath's nearing completion

The road to full Java freedom is almost at hand. With GNU Classpath team's effort, a free and open source JVM is in near completion, at least on the compatibility with Sun's JDK 1.4 specs. I am on the impression that Apache's Project Harmony may fork Classpath or leverage on it. Well, whatever the outcome is, still, we have a free JVM.

Classpath is a project that aims to create free core class libraries for use with runtimes, compilers and tools for the Java programming language. Coupled with GNU's GCJ (GCC for Java) you'll have a nice tandem of F/OSS Java runtime and development libraries. Unless, of course, your software will be sold and you're not ready to take on a GPLed code.

Notable improvements to the latest release 0.19 are:

• More efficient swing


• Better inter-operation with CORBA, support for RMI over IIOP

Highlights from GNU Classpath

Much more efficient painting for large Free Swing GUIs. Improved accessibility support. HttpURLConnection rewrite. Official CORBA VMCID assigned. Start of RMI over IIOP support. Qt4 support for OS-X. Much improved Free Swing Metal theme. Free Swing Demo includes theme switcher example (Metal, Ocean, GNU). JBoss now starts up and Jonas testsuite passes for 95%. Support for the javax.sound.midi framework and experimental DSSI and ALSA service providers. Early version of the popular StAX API. Now has 96% coverage of 1.4 API.

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