Mailing-List: contact harmony-dev-help@incubator.apache.org; run by ezmlm
Precedence: bulk
Reply-To: harmony-dev@incubator.apache.org
Received-SPF: pass (hermes.apache.org: local policy)
From: "Renaud BECHADE" <renaud.bechade@numerix.com>
To: <harmony-dev@incubator.apache.org>
Subject: RE: [arch] VM Candidate : JikesRVM http://jikesrvm.sourceforge.net/
Date: Tue, 24 May 2005 10:35:21 +0900
MIME-Version: 1.0
Content-Type: text/plain;
	charset="iso-2022-jp"
Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit
Thread-Index: AcVfjtj3NTa2tmSUQLOeuEp3mORMOgAarcAQ
In-Reply-To: <DF625B1C-8679-4A2A-8B83-24C3E4A83B0F@apache.org>
Message-Id: <20050524013511.E147D202172@nxmail.numerix.com>


＞It would be great if people would bundle Harmony with stuff (and plan
＞to do it w/ Geronimo when that time comes), bit it's way out of scope
＞for *this* project to get into the business of reditributing software
＞from outside of the ASF.

Hum... I still think there is a minimum distribution effort to be done (call
that marketing if you want) to get people to actually test the VM, as in the
beginning it might be very, very, very unlikely that absolutely everything
runs out of the box as replacement for J2SE 5 or 6... So we will need to
help them try it out.
(Basically, to me some nice IDE + app-server + a few dummy examples, swing &
jsf for instance, is the bare minimum to provide as a
demo-micro-distribution-to-test-it-in-reasonable-situations; the IDE only
might be non-ASF, as I don’t think there is a widely accepted ASF-IDE
[well, yes: Eclipse plugins for Tapestry & co. :-); please accept my
apologies if there is one, my point is not selling Eclipse in particular but
having an IDE to play with the VM, for instance to test practically its
debugging interface, and show it to others])

Just think of it in OS terms as a
micro-bootable-live-CD-to-demo-it-actually-works-on-useful-cases (a stuff
for decision makers). Bundling with 1 or 2 apps we/the ASF did not write is
not to be covered by NIH syndrome in my opinion, but rather a way to prove
it actually works to decision makers. (After all, mono bundles mono with
monodevelop [or rather monodevelop with mono, I think], and Sun bundles
Netbeans with J2SE...)

Just the same as if you develop, say, a 'new simulation algorithm for
reaction-diffusion discrete systems, which is "discrete, adaptive" '[1]. In
order to get credit from ordinary people (who might not be familiar with its
technical beauty, right?), even if the scope of this project is on soft
architecture and math analysis, you might have to provide scientifically
uninteresting display that it works... (Spiraling pattern for simplified
models of myocardium cells electrophysiology: that is, simulation of cardiac
arrhythmia in dummy demo-only situation, so here the mystery of what it is
ends here [2])
That is, with some 'out of scope' effort you get images for the layman to be
impressed...

To come back to more soft-only concerns, IMHO providing distributors with
the minimum tool they need to polish the VM-to-VM discrepancies and external
developers the minimum tools they need to test their soft on the Harmony VM
(and get a chance to actually do something - not just: 'it does not work' -
if it does not work the way they planned it) might be a big ROI,
comparatively small effort.

A VM without the bare minimum support tools might appear a bit useless to
many people (and also impractical to test with an ergonomic, long-lasting
experience of beautiful-looking piece of software). If you take, say, the
FreeBSD case, you don’t have much choice for instance for the VM you use
with your favorite IDE, so that ipso facto you stick with the VM you get in
stock (because the other VMs might be good, but if it’s a nightmare to
reconfigure it all to use your VM of choice with your favorite IDE...), just
like IE sticks with many win$ users.

As a use case, if I want to test a piece of software, well I would like it
to be kind of "download it and play".

Regards,

RB

[1] Sorry I take examples of my own... (Well, the research I once did)
[2] It was so simplified it was meaningless in my opinion, but I got my
credits with it...

-----Original Message-----
From: Geir Magnusson Jr. [mailto:geirm@apache.org]
Sent: Monday, May 23, 2005 8:58 PM
To: harmony-dev@incubator.apache.org
Subject: Re: [arch] VM Candidate : JikesRVM http://jikesrvm.sourceforge.net/


On May 22, 2005, at 9:27 PM, Renaud BECHADE wrote:

>
>
> ＞　No.  Why would we do this?
> People tend to be lazy. If they have a bundle with one VM, then
> they will
> use that VM, for most of them, IMHO. I seriously doubt we can have
> people
> trust an alternative VM if it is not a piece of cake (sort of "with
> a one
> liner on the console you are started") to develop with it, and as
> it is
> unlikely it will support everything perfectly at the beginning (to
> convince
> you let us consider running .NET soft on a Linux/Mono machine, or
> XSP code
> on a FreeBSD/mono machine - sometimes it crashes badly, or again
> freeware
> support of Flash swf, all of which can have slightly strange behaviors
> sometimes, if compared with commercial equivalents, so that a
> development
> that is not started /from the beginning/ with them might get into
> troubles)
> there will be some intensive testing to do on real applications,
> which might
> involve some patches on "must-have" packages such as Eclipse / J2EE
> etc.
> (including strategies as simple as repackaging with a bit less
> modules to
> have it actually run because some funny class is not here)


It would be great if people would bundle Harmony with stuff (and plan
to do it w/ Geronimo when that time comes), bit it's way out of scope
for *this* project to get into the business of reditributing software
from outside of the ASF.

geir

>
> RB
>
> -----Original Message-----
> From: Geir Magnusson Jr. [mailto:geirm@apache.org]
> Sent: Friday, May 20, 2005 7:38 PM
> To: harmony-dev@incubator.apache.org
> Subject: Re: [arch] VM Candidate : JikesRVM http://
> jikesrvm.sourceforge.net/
>
>
> On May 19, 2005, at 10:29 PM, Renaud BECHADE wrote:
>
>
>>
>>
>> Another point that is unrelated, but what about the "packaging" of
>> the VM?
>> Do we plan to release it with say Eclipse + Server (JSF + IDE +
>> object DB or
>> O/R mapping + HSQL DB)? (IMHO this is good way to legitimate it)
>>
>
> No.  Why would we do this?
>
> We want our JRE or JDK to be an alternative to the existing JREs and
> JDKs w/o having people worry about all the cruft.
>
> If you had an interest in bundling for some reason,  you could of
> course take the thing and do that elsewhere (or start a separate
> project here if there was enough support and a decent rationale...)
>
> geir
>
> --
> Geir Magnusson Jr                                  +1-203-665-6437
> geirm@apache.org
>
>
>

--
Geir Magnusson Jr                                  +1-203-665-6437
geirm@apache.org