Tuesday November 06, 2007 ![[Duke Thinking]](http://mediacast.sun.com/share/tmarble/Duke-Thinking.jpg)
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Tom Marble's Weblog
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Tuesday November 06, 2007
Red Hat and OpenJDK
I'm sure you've seen the
news
that Red Hat has signed the Sun Contributor Agreement (SCA)
and the OpenJDK Community TCK License Agreement (OCTLA).
My coworkers
webmink,
barton808,
mr
and rsands
have already blogged about it!
It's important to realize that
IcedTea is intended as
a temporary project until the remaining closed bits of OpenJDK
have been removed. The best explanation of comes from
Andrew Haley (aph) when he
introduced IcedTea.
While others have talked about the "what it is" allow me to speculate on "what opportunities this creates". Now just as Pascal has got everyone thinking about FOSDEM 2008 it's about time for me to share with you more of a discussion which dates back to FOSDEM 2007
At that time aph from Red Hat shared with me his idea of making OpenJDK part of the GNU/Linux tool chain. We have, separately, talked a great deal about the importance of integrated packaging and deployment for Java™ to be successful on GNU/Linux.
Getting into the "tool chain" would mean:
- Being available on all architectures supported by the distribution
- Debugger support so that, for example, it is possible to step from C++ code into Java code and back again.
- Profiler support for mixed source programs... possibly even with kernel profiling (with oprofile)
- Being installable as a valid build dependency for Java library and application developers
- GNU/Linux applications based on Java could have a substantial percentage of code which is architecture independent. This would reduce the number of packages and size of the distributor's archive (because a *.jar file should run anywhere -- you package it one time for all architectures). It would also reduce time to build a new OS release for each architecture.
- OS developers could write administrative utilities (at least partially) in Java instead of C and thus benefit from a rich set of libraries while avoiding the pitfalls of pointer manipulation
- The pluggable look and feel framework of Java could help GNU/Linux get beyond the widget/desktop differences (Gnome, KDE, Xcfe) so that Java applications always look well integrated.
- Developing GUI administration tools for GNU/Linux could improve the "ease of use" barrier for a new class of GNU/Linux users.
The opportunities for OpenJDK are clear:
- There is now an OpenJDK Porters group proposal to facilitate porting to new architectures (and other operating systems). Many developers have contacted me about porting OpenJDK to new combinations of operating systems + chip architectures.
- Adding debugging and profiling capability to the HotSpot virtual machine is complex precisely because the methods are dynamically compiled, but we can leverage the technology in the NetBeans profiler -- recently available under the GPL.
- As OpenJDK expands our infrastructure it will be easier to collaborate with the community on open source replacements for the remaining encumbrances. Consequently the 100% open source OpenJDK would be a candidate for inclusion in the main repository of Free Software GNU/Linux distributions.
(A big grazie to neugens for enhancing my flickr photo!)
That is why the rapprochement of the Red Hat team with OpenJDK can help Java move towards "tool chain" status, unleash the cross-architecture power on GNU/Linux, and expand Java Compatible ubiquity. Thank you Red Hat!
Posted by tmarble ( Nov 06 2007, 07:17:23 PM CST ) Permalink