Looking at JamVM again

In 2009 I had some attempts at JamVM. Now I have actually managed to get JamVM running on AmigaOS 4. You can read more on what was the turning point at amigans.net. So currently I'm going JamVM, all in!

What does this then mean, exactly?

Well, for starters, from my point of view: in february 2010 I posted a blog on my JAmiga efforts. This was in 2010. Now, more than two years later, I have still not managed to get a 0.0.7 version out. Although work has been progressing, it has been slow. I have had the aim to add network support, but it has been a sisyphean task. Whenever I have thought; "just these few things need to be done, then I will have this feature working", there have always been new stuff lurking round the corner.

The things lurking have been mostly involved with stuff not fully implemented in the actual JAmiga virtual machine, i.e. binary executing Java classes by translating the bytecode into native processor instructions. There have also been issues with some JNI calls not fully implemented; like in my previous post regarding shuffling data to and from byte arrays. The way I have been solving it this far have been just trying to get rid of the problem quickly, by either copying stuff from other projects or returning something invented, adding up to quite some hefty technical debt.

Basically, I've been reinventing the wheel, when what I want to concentrate on is the connection between the JVM and the Amiga -- the classpath library. Basically, what I begun implementing in terms of network support. By taking the JamVM route, I have a fully invented wheel, and can concentrate on the Amiga native stuff, like network, GUI/Swing, audio, creating a really tight Amiga integration with ARexx and stuff.

JamVM features

To round of, a few motivating facts about JamVM:

• PowerPC support, quoting Robert Lougher on JamVM:s webpage: "for many years my main platform, so this is well tested".
• Small codebase -- I've got a good overview of all the files. I've looked at Oracle's HotSpot VM, and that is a hairier monster.
• Widely used, JamVM is the primary JVM for ARM Ubuntu
• Thoroughly tested
• Supports both GNU Classpath and OpenJDK

The plan

I've just checked in the latest JamVM branch into the JAmiga SVN, and this will be altered with Amiga modifications. The plan is to first have it compile for AmigaOS 4, using pthreads, and added modifications to load JAmiga's classpath libraries. In its current form JamVM could theoretically use OS 4's .so-object support, but since JAmiga's classpath library is implemented with ordinary Amiga libraries, and this is the way we ultimately want it, I choose to prioritize like this.