Free Java Opens Doors To .NET World

Sat, 28 Jan 2006 06:42:01 GMT

I spotted this message on the GNU Classpath mailing list yesterday:

Michael Kay: I'm working on a port of the Saxon XSLT and XQuery processor to the .NET platform using IKVMC. (You may already be familiar with this as Saxon.NET, but I'm now looking at folding it into the core product).

I've followed the Free Java (GNU gcj, Apache Harmony, GNU Classpath), .NET (Mono), and XML (XQuery, XSLT) spaces separately for a long time now. Today's post links the three together in a uniquely surprising yet logical fashion.

For people who don't know, Michael Kay is editor of W3C XSLT 2.0 and XPath 2.0 standards, and author of the popular open source XSLT/XQuery implementation Saxon. IKVMC is the Java bytecode to .NET CIL compiler from the IKVM project by Jeroen Frijters. It turns jar files into .NET assemblies for use under both Microsoft .Net Framework and Mono. It uses GNU Classpath as its underlying class library.

I think this move sends several signals to the wider Java community, especially those who dismissed the GNU Classpath effort when it started in the last millennium as a waste of time and have not revisited it since:

GNU Classpath is more complete than its 0.20 designation suggests. Most non-Swing Java 1.4 applications libraries should be runnable with it.
GNU Classpath based compilers and runtimes have already fulfilled their potential of taking Java to new and unexpected places.
It pays to make sure that your library works with both the Sun JDK and free Java because it will take you places you never thought you could go.

Take a look at the free tools. You may have already won a free ticket to those places (natively compiled executables, .NET environment, bundled with a Linux distributions and end up on millions of computers)! if your code compiles and runs with a free compiler and runtime.

Weiqi Gao's Observations - classpath tag

Free Java Opens Doors To .NET World