Hello,

Brian Hechinger wrote:
> 
> ok, i've recently gotten into toying with java, and i have the question of:
> 
> is running java going to happen for port-macppc?  i've got plenty of Solaris
> boxes here to run it on, or will once i get them setup, and in the
> meantime, i would like to do some devel work on my mac.
> 
> is this reasonable?  does java even work well on NetBSD?  the source code *is*
> available, does sun include enough to build a working Java from it?  would
> porting be something i might want to look at for the good of NetBSD?  all the
> "best" jdk stuff seems to be linux that we are running via compat.
hmmm.

well. . welcome to the "java trap".
There are of course open-sourced java virtual machines, with real open
source licenses.
Their degree of completneess and efficiency varies greatly from os to os
and from architecture to architecture though, proportionally to the time
was spent in.

In the last year compatibilty has gone long strides in classpath. 

So depending from your needs, you might try to compile your application
with gcj for example. Or use Kaffe.
Kaffe wors reasonably well on x86 (jit-3), decently on sparc (jit-1) and
on ppc it works, but currently only in interpterer mode, the jit exists
but is not functional at the moment.

But you should really try kaffe, keep track of it from CVS! and if you
find a bug, let us know! (kaffe@kaffe.org). Bugs are squeezed everyday.
NetBSD/ppc is coming along decently, the last test using pthreads
(istead of the internal jthreads which are inherently more portable)
gave 4 regressions tests failed out of 147. I would calssify it suhc as
"usable". But more than every regression test, it is real usage and real
applications that test a VM

have fun,

   Ricardo