Re: Removing the TARGET_* layer or not ?

[Grzegorz B. Prokopski]

W liście z wto, 03-08-2004, godz. 07:29, Michael Koch pisze: 
> Ingo: Now my question are you really using the TARGET_* system or is 
> it only rotting around in GNU classpath ? I really wonder if some 
> AUTOCONF macros would be more helpful for you ?

I personally have never had a positive experience with these overcomplex
redirections, multiline C macros (yuck!), 100-characters long uppercase
names...

> If it is consensus that noone understands the cod and its good to 
> rewrite it I can start it. Then I will do it slowly part for part and 
> try to introduce as less as possible bugs. Unfortunately there will 
> be bugs introduced. We are all humans. So this will need some testing 
> on some archs, Linux, *.BSD, AIX, Solaris ... etc.

Yes, that would be really great.  At least it would be easier to
understand the code and remove bugs.  Can we simply have the
implementations directly in i.e. java_lang_...*.c files?
I have already seen Mark proposing another layer of inderection inside
these files, but I am not sure it's really needed.  When it's really
needed we can have i.e java_lang*_WIN.c files that are used instead
of the default ones, or have separate directory for these files.

> What is your opinion on the TARGET_* system ?

I really wish it could just go away.

> It would be nice to get a statement from the AICAS people too as they 
> introduced it.

They surely had their own, good reasons.  But apparenlty we actually
only have one working implementation of these native parts in GNU CP
anyway and it's been so since the layer was introduced...

I think GCJ's approach is reasonable, if I understood it well.

The basic implementation is for POSIX systems + autoconf for detecting
system's features.  And for the systems that are really too different
from POSIX there might be separate files that replace whole parts of
native layers.  I guess MS Windows port would be (the only?) one such.

Cheers,

                                Grzegorz B. Prokopski

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