On Tuesday 16 October 2007 00:42:17 Andrew John Hughes wrote: > We are proud to announce the release of GNU Classpath 0.96 "Staying Alive" > > GNU Classpath, essential libraries for java, is a project to create > free core class libraries for use with runtimes, compilers and tools > for the java programming language. > > The GNU Classpath developer snapshot releases are not directly aimed > at the end user but are meant to be integrated into larger development > platforms. For example the GCC (gcj) and Kaffe projects will use the > developer snapshots as a base for future versions. More projects based > on GNU Classpath: http://www.gnu.org/software/classpath/stories.html > > This release is primarily a maintenance release. The recent release of the > majority of Sun's class library as Free Software on May the 8th, under the > auspices of the OpenJDK project (http://openjdk.java.net) has changed the > position of GNU Classpath within the community and recent efforts have > focused on bringing together Classpath and OpenJDK code under the umbrella > of IcedTea (http://icedtea.classpath.org) and on using the new OpenJDK code > within existing Free runtime environments such as cacao > (http://www.cacaojvm.org/) and IKVM (http://www.ikvm.net/). We hope to > extend support and work together with the OpenJDK community over time. > > That said, the main feature of this release is our new experimental > GStreamer peer arising from the work of Mario Torre on his Google Summer of > Code project (http://code.google.com/soc/2007). This provides support for > the javax.sound API using the GStreamer library > (gstreamer.freedesktop.org), allowing any sound file supported by GStreamer > to be played from Java. Full details are provided in the included > README.gstreamer file. The peer is not yet ready for production use, but > please try it and give us your feedback. > > We've also improved our support for interacting with the outside world. > Our JNI header has been updated to 1.6, we now better support choosing a > compiler to use to build Classpath (either ecj or OpenJDK javac, the latter > now having support for using the -J option to avoid out of memory errors) > and our tools support has improved so as to better stand as a substitute > for Sun's toolset. > > AWT and Swing have seen a host of bug fixes and updates, including much > improved Escher peers. Our thanks to Roman Kennke and others working on > Classpath's GUI support. Screenshots of applications (eclipse, jedit, > jfreechart, "jgecko", statcvs and more) working out of the box with GNU > Classpath can be found at http://developer.classpath.org/screenshots/ > > With our last release, 0.95, we switched fully towards the 1.5 generics > work that we previously released separately as classpath-generics. All this > work is now fully integrated in the main release and various runtimes (gcj, > cacao, jamvm, ikvm, etc) have been extended to take advantage of the new > generics, annotations and enumeration support in the core > library. As a consequence, only 1.5 capable compilers (currently the > Eclipse Compiler for Java (ecj) and Sun's javac) may be used to build > Classpath. > > The GNU Classpath developers site http://developer.classpath.org/ > provides detailed information on how to start with helping the GNU > Classpath project and gives an overview of the core class library > packages currently provided. > > For each snapshot release generated documentation is provided through > the GNU Classpath Tools gjdoc project. A documentation generation > framework for java source files used by the GNU project. Full > documentation on the currently implemented packages and classes can > be found at: http://developer.classpath.org/doc/. We are looking into how > to extend the documentation experience based on these two tools in the > future. Please contact the mailinglist if you like to help with this > effort. > > For more information about the project see also: > > - GNU Classpath home page: > http://www.gnu.org/software/classpath/ > > - Developer information (wiki): > http://developer.classpath.org/ > > - Full class documentation > http://developer.classpath.org/doc/ > > - GNU Classpath hackers: > http://planet.classpath.org/ > > - Autobuilder, current build status, build snapshots: > http://builder.classpath.org/ > > - Application test pages (wiki) > http://developer.classpath.org/mediation/Applets > http://developer.classpath.org/mediation/FreeAWTTestApps > http://developer.classpath.org/mediation/FreeSwingTestApps > http://developer.classpath.org/mediation/FreeSWTTestApps > > - GNU Classpath hacking with Eclipse (wiki) > http://developer.classpath.org/mediation/ClasspathHackingWithEclipse > > - GNU Classpath promotion banners: > http://developer.classpath.org/mediation/ClasspathBanners > > GNU Classpath 0.96 can be downloaded from > ftp://ftp.gnu.org/pub/gnu/classpath/ > or one of the ftp.gnu.org mirrors > http://www.gnu.org/order/ftp.html > > File: classpath-0.96.tar.gz > MD5sum: 650dd3ac4ae2939f296c81f885d24a36 > SHA1sum: dcb71d1f0b915f8529361faf862a850b7f404dba > > New in release 0.96 (Oct 15, 2007) > (See the ChangeLog file for a full list of changes.) > > * New experimental GStreamer javax.sound peer (see README.gstreamer) > * The JNI interface has been updated to 1.6 > * Better support for the OpenJDK javac compiler > * Support for using javah via tools.zip and com.sun.tools.javah.Main > * Much improved Escher AWT peers > * Many bug fixes including improvements to AWT and Swing support > > Runtime interface changes: > > * Add VMFloat.toString(float) and VMFloat.parseFloat(String). Default > implementations are the same as previous behavior. > * Add new default implementations of VMMemoryMXBean.getHeapUsage() > and VMMemoryMXBean.getNonHeapUsage() via iteration over the memory > pools of the appropriate type. > > The following people helped with this release: > > Andreas Tobler, Andrew Haley, Andrew John Hughes, Casey Marshall, Chris > Burdess, Christian Thalinger, Dalibor Topic, David P Grove, Francis Kung, > Gary Benson, Ian Rogers, Ito Kazumitsu, Jeroen Frijters, Keith Seitz, Kyle > Galloway, Mario Torre, Mark Wielaard, Matthias Klose, Paul Jenner, Robert > Schuster, Robin Garner, Roman Kennke, Tania Bento, Thomas Fitzsimmons and > Tom Tromey. > > We would also like to thank the numerous bug reporters and testers! In > addition, we'd like to extend our thanks to all those who've contributed > over the years and have helped in building a thriving and friendly > community around the GNU Classpath project. > > Thanks, Note that currently it only resides on builder.classpath.org/dist as Mark needs to do the upload to the GNU servers. -- Andrew :)
