This tries to answer several broad questions about running the Blackdown JDK on Linux.
$Id: 02-overview.sgml,v 1.5 1998/11/15 22:29:17 stevemw Exp stevemw $
Running Java on Linux is about what you'd expect. You should be able to run most "pure Java" applications on the Linux JDK or JRE. It does take a little longer to get the latest JDK on a target that Javasoft doesn't officially support.
At the time of this writing, the latest supported Blackdown JDK version is 1.1.7v1a. Please see section Where to obtain JDK 1.02 and 1.1? for places to download. To determine your version, use this command:
$ java -version
This is only a basic summary. The Alpha, SPARC, and PPC platforms may have different requirements, for example.
i18n.jar, JDK 1.1.7
i386 glibc version takes about 70MB of free space if you include
the native threads pack. You can make it smaller by removing these and
the demos.This section closely matches the organization of the Blackdown distribution mirror hierarchy. This part of the FAQ is rather thin on details at the moment, but it should help you to see which archive to retrieve. You may also be interested in reading section What System Configuration do I Need to Run the JDK? above. After reading this, if you're still wondering which individual archive to download, please see What are These Files? below.
The Blackdown version of the JDK is only supported on Intel. If you know of other Linux platforms to which the JDK has been ported, please tell the FAQ maintainer. Look for the mirror closest to you by following instructions in section Where to obtain JDK 1.02 and 1.1?.
................................ alpha/ ................................ i386/ ................................ sparclinux/ ................................ mklinux/ ................................ common/For an official description of the FTP site, look for an up to date version of README.ftp.txt, at the top level of your closest mirror.
To just run the JDK, you don't need anything out of common/.
Those diff(1) files are for people who want to request free
access to the SPARC/x86 Solaris and i386 Win32
sources from Sun and help with the port. See section
Compiling the Blackdown JDK from Source for more
information.
By now, many readers are still wondering what each archive in the mirror directories is. Below is a representation of what your favorite web browser would have displayed if you were visiting a Blackdown JDK mirror recently.
Current directory is /pub/java-linux/JDK-1.1.7/i386/glibc/v1a
Up to higher level directory
README-1.1.7v1a.txt
README.native_threads.txt
i18n_1.1.7-v1a-glibc-x86.tar.bz2
i18n_1.1.7-v1a-glibc-x86.tar.gz
jdk_1.1.7-v1a-glibc-x86-native.tar.bz2
jdk_1.1.7-v1a-glibc-x86-native.tar.gz
jdk_1.1.7-v1a-glibc-x86.tar.bz2
jdk_1.1.7-v1a-glibc-x86.tar.gz
jre_1.1.7-v1a-glibc-x86-native.tar.bz2
jre_1.1.7-v1a-glibc-x86-native.tar.gz
jre_1.1.7-v1a-glibc-x86.tar.bz2
jre_1.1.7-v1a-glibc-x86.tar.gz
rt_1.1.7-v1a-glibc-x86-native.tar.bz2
rt_1.1.7-v1a-glibc-x86-native.tar.gz
rt_1.1.7-v1a-glibc-x86.tar.bz2
rt_1.1.7-v1a-glibc-x86.tar.gz
glibc (perhaps by reading
What is glibc, and Why Does it Matter?).
Now you'd like to know what these four files do for you, and which
ones you should download.
Please see section Questions about Non-i386 Blackdown JDK Ports for more information. http://www.blackdown.org/java-linux/ports.html.
Most likely. For example, I've tested Javasoft's JFC SwingSet (see http://java.sun.com/products/jfc/) with a static Motif build and a Lesstif build with good results.
This typically involves downloading the package and untarring or unzipping it. Sometimes the vendor won't provide an installation procedure that works well on Linux, and so you have to adjust a script or do it by hand.
Sometime shortly after Javasoft's reference port. The Blackdown team has the sources and is working on porting it.
After a fashion. Just run unzip on the Solaris shell script
archive; it'll unpack it for you. You can then unpack the
src.zip archive. Also, you can already get the documentation
from Javasoft from
http://www.javasoft.com/docs/index.html.
We still don't know about full support yet. At one point, bug 4097810 was at the top of the JDC Bug Parade. You can read about it at: http://developer.java.sun.com/developer/bugParade/bugs/4097810.html.
There are a number of complex issues involved with this request, including the wide variety of Linux distributions, target architectures (beyond Intel where Javasoft already supports Solaris x86), the huge number of announced APIs with required native support, and so forth.
However, Javasoft has released the JDK 1.2 sources to the Blackdown team, and is providing measured engineering resources to help complete the port. You can read more about this in a press-release published on Javasoft's website. See http://www.javasoft.com/pr/1998/11/pr981102-01.html.
Green threads use some magic with jmp_bufs, stack
pointers, the program counter, and some other hocus pocus to schedule
different instruction streams. This gives the practical effect of
multi-threading with some caveats about signals and how they're
handled across longjmp()s. See the discussion of
native threads in section
Is There a Native Threads Port of the Blackdown JDK?.
Yes, thanks to Phill Edwards. See the file README.native_threads.txt. Up to date versions of this file are available at your closest mirror.
Native threads should improve performance on multi-processor (SMP) systems and they tend to make native method invocation support easier to deal with. They depend on kernel processes, and therefore are limited to the number compiled into a given kernel.
Here's an excerpt from the threads README to help you get started:
To use the native threads package, you must first install the matching
JDK release. Then, the matching native thread package must be installed
at the same location. This package adds some directories to the JDK
tree. For example, the x86 install would best be done as:
% tar -zxf jdk_1.1.7-v1a-x86-glibc.tar.gz
% tar -zxf jdk_1.1.7-v1a-x86-glibc-native.tar.gz
This will make the JDK directory tree in "jdk117_v1a"
You can find more information about related command-line options and
environment variables in that README.
Take a look at http://www.blackdown.org/activator/. This is a random port (from Sun) of the Java Activator Plugin for Netscape. Note that this one-time build isn't at all supported, and that Blackdown developers don't have source for it.
There are several. Please take a look at http://www.blackdown.org/java-linux/javatools.html for pointers.
Alexander Davydenko <alex@Javad.Ru> posted an
updated configure script to install TYA that this author
hasn't tested. You can read his post at
http://www.mail-archive.com/java-linux@java.blackdown.org/msg00126.html
.
Karl Asha's Blackdown server, http://www.blackdown.org/java-linux.html, has a number of resources. Among other things, Karl provides the following pointers: