Re: egit/jgit wishlist

From: Johannes Schindelin <johannes.schindelin@gmx.de>
Date: Dec 5, 2006, 08:37 UTC
Message-ID: <Pine.LNX.4.63.0612050922590.28348@wbgn013.biozentrum.uni-wuerzburg.de>
In-Reply-To: <Pine.LNX.4.63.0612042235270.14187@alpha.polcom.net>

Hi,

On Mon, 4 Dec 2006, Grzegorz Kulewski wrote:

> But it will be working (== end user usable) after many months not days.

Not really. JNI is not that easy to get to work, you know? _Especially_ with cygwin, where you have to transform pathnames from native to posix format.

It is much work, for just a temporary solution.

> And please note that Java is not that portable as many people are 
> suggesting.

But it is.

There are more official Java engines than just those from Sun. For example, I worked on an SGI machine, where I did not have enough quota to install gcc and friends, but Java.

Also, now that it will be GPLed, you can be sure that even more platforms become supported.

And the most important aspect of portability: You really can run the compiled code anywhere. This is in stark contrast to C, C#, Perl, etc.

> Maybe it will change but currently I will bet C + bash + perl (+ 
> python?) is more portable than Java.

You lost.

> Java (J2SE) is officially supported mainly under Windows, Solaris, Linux 
> and maybe Mac. There are more ports but unfortunatelly way too many of 
> them are old, buggy, have not full library implementations or something 
> like that.

Aha. But you don't need them. For example, you do not need a full working CORBA library, or JDBC, or whatever. Java 1.1 should be sufficient (except for that stupid mmap bug).

> Eclipse also currently works only under Windows, Linux and Mac.

This a completely different beef. IBM, in its infinite wisdom, decided to scrap the platform independent Swing UI, and made its own (SWT). In C++. Yes, you need to compile it for _every_ platform you want to run Eclipse on. Brilliant.

> Can you name one system where Java (J2SE 1.4 or better 1.5) works 
> (fully, not sometimes) and where GIT does not work?

As has been said, Windows. Oh, and some mobile phones. And some embedded devices. Maybe even VMS.

Ciao, Dscho