JamVM 1.5.3 released on 14th April 2009
=======================================
JamVM 1.5.3 is primarily a bug-fix release. It fixes issues seen
while running Eclipse 3.4.2 and JRuby 1.2.0RC2, and adds some minor
features. A summary of the changes:
- Zip/Jar support in the boot classloader has been rewritten to
no longer require the Zip/Jar files to be mmap-ed read/write.
This increases shareability between multiple VM instances, and
improves memory-usage on embedded systems.
- JNI invocation API:
- set thread-self to NULL when thread detaches (if the thread tries
to re-attach, it appears to still be attached)
- init args_count in dummy stack frame (fix problem if the thread
detaches and then re-attaches)
- Do not create a library unloader for libraries loaded by the bootstrap
loader if they have an JNI_OnUnload method (the bootstrap loader is
never unloaded, and so they will never be called). Fixes a SEGV with
JRuby.
- Fix to annotation handling. When the annotation value is an array,
the native annotation parser constructs an Object array. However,
the method return value is the specific type. This leads to an
AnnotationTypeMismatchException. The fix coerces the Object
array to the correct type.
- Simple implementation of java.lang.management.VMManagementFactory
(returns no memory pool, memory manager or GC names). Sufficient
to run JRuby.
- Implemented package support in the bootstrap class loader. Package
information is obtained from the manifest file if it exists. However,
GNU Classpath's glibj.zip's manifest has no package information.
The class library is therefore recognised by the presence of
java/lang/Object.class, and appropriate package information is
constructed.
- Fix broken implementation of VMClass.getSimpleName() (use the
implementation from gcj)
- Default Java stack size increased to 256K from 64K
- Fix to bootstrap loader getResources() when the bootclasspath
entry is relative (prepend the current working directory)
- Fix minor memory leak in bootstrap loader getResources()
- Add --enable-tls option to configure, enabling thread-local-storage
(__thread) to be disabled
JamVM 1.5.2 released on 1st February 2009
=========================================
A summary of changes since 1.5.1:
- Interpreter inlining changes
- Basic-blocks are now inlined across block boundaries removing
the need for dispatching between blocks in the case of
fall-through control flow
- Control-flow within inlined sequences now patched with real jumps,
removing the need for computed jumps
- Control flow between non-shared sequences now patched, replacing
dispatch with real jumps
- Simple basic-block profiling is now implemented. This considerably
reduces the size of the code-cache, without reducing performance
- Reworked Object layout
- Previously, on 64-bit machines the object layout was wasteful, with
padding on fields less than 64-bits (to preserve 64-bit alignment).
The new object layout on average reduces heap usage by approx
10 - 15%
- On 32-bit machines, 64-bit fields are now 64-bit aligned (without
introducing extra padding if possible)
- Various alignment fixes
- 64-bit alignment of operand stack
- 64-bit alignment of static variable data
- Reflection support
- Reworking required for new object layout
- Reworked to use VMConstructor, VMMethod, etc.
- Reworked to improve field access and method invocation performance
(this offsets the extra costs of the VM interface, and improves
performance over 1.5.1).
- Access permission checks take precedence over other errors
- Class/method signatures : do not convert slash to dots
- JNI fixes/improvements
- Class references returned by JNI now use local references
- Throw InstantiationException not InstantiationError when allocating
objects and the class is an interface or abstract
- Reworked JNI global references
- Fix memory leak when expanding list
- Improve performance (optimise case where references are
created/deleted in a stack-like manner)
- OpenSolaris/Solaris/x86 port
- GC fixes
- Fix race-condition in registering references with the GC
- Separate "Async GC" thread is now disabled by default. It didn't
improve performance, and could increase power-consumption on
embedded systems
- Exception handling
- Fix method-skipping when filling in stack trace (methods could
be incorrectly excluded from the trace when a class subclassed
Throwable)
- Uncaught exceptions in the "main" thread will now use the thread's
uncaughtExceptionHandler
- Various compatibility command line options recognised (and
ignored). These include -XX:PermSize and XX:MaxPermSize
required to build OpenJDK.
- sun.misc.Unsafe
- Object methods (compareAndSwapObject, etc.) fixed on 64-bit
machines
- Implemented support for thread park and unpark (removing previous
highly inefficient "empty" implementation)
- Use thread-local storage (__thread), if available, instead of
pthread keys
- Various minor race-conditions seen while running Dacapo benchmarks
- Strict-aliasing fixes when compiled with GCC 4.3, interpreter
stack-caching is enabled, and interpreter inlining is on
- A large amount of code-tidying throughout the VM
- Minimum heap size increased to 16MB
- Various compiler warnings.
JamVM 1.5.1 released on 10th March 2008
=======================================
A summary of changes since 1.5.0:
- Implemented a new internal VM symbol framework. This ensures that
all class, method, field names, etc. are unique thus removing the
need to use strcmp for comparison.
- Implemented a new internal VM exception mechanism for frequent
exceptions thrown within the VM.
- Hand-coded support for AMD64 ABI. Previously AMD64 required libffi
but this is not individually packaged on some Linux distributions.
On a random set of signatures the hand-coded assembler is 4.6 times
faster (and jBYTEmark FP Index is 30% faster).
- Ported to Darwin/ARM (i.e. the iPhone). Built using unofficial
toolchain and tested on jailbroken iPhone (1.1.3 firmware)
- Class initialisation/first active use fixes
- initialise if first active use is object allocation via reflection
(newInstance)
- initialise if first active use is object allocation via JNI
(AllocObject/NewObject)
- The wait in step 2 of the initialisation sequence must be
non-interruptible (not specified in the JVM or Java spec).
- If allocation of the ExceptionInInitializerError fails,
OutOfMemoryError should be thrown not the original exception
- Don't resolve if initialiser throws ExceptionInInitializerError
(subsequent resolution will not see the class is erroneous)
- JNI_OnLoad fixes
- initialise JNI local refs before calling
- if JNI_FindClass is called from JNI_OnLoad, ensure correct class
loader context is used.
- JNI_OnUnload fixes
- initialise JNI local refs before calling
- If a library defines JNI_OnUnload, and the class loader which
loaded it is GCed JNI_OnUnload is called and the library is
unloaded. Previously this was done within the GC. If OnUnload
allocated objects it could corrupt the heap. Dummy unloader
objects are now created, and JNI_OnUnload is called from the
finalize method by the finalizer thread.
- Fix variable argument passing of floats When calling Java methods from
native code
- Rework VM initialisation/start-up sequence
- Fix for JNI_ThrowNew and exceptions loaded by non-bootstrap classloader
- Fix for JNI_GetMethodID and object/class initialiser methods
(do not search class hierarchy)
- During resolution throw IllegalAccessError and not IllegalAccessException
- handle loadClass returning null without throwing exception
- Fix for running Jar files where the main class is package-protected
- Interpeter inlining changes
- Do not inline class initialisers (<clinit>). No performance
improvement as they are only ran once. Reduces memory usage
- Fix for class unloading when inlining disabled (-Xnoinlining)
- Bump java.specification.version to 1.5
- Improve error messages if VM aborts during initialisation
- During configure, do not disable zip/jar file support if zlib library
or header can't be found (now aborts). Users never saw the warning
and they ended up with a build which "didn't work".
- Various compiler warnings.
JamVM 1.5.0 released on 28th October 2007
=========================================
A summary of changes since 1.4.5:
- Substantially modified the interpreter to implement inline-threading
(also known as super-instructions or code-copying). This copies
code sequences together to produce native code that executes without
the normal interpreter dispatch overhead (similar to a simple JIT).
- Supported on i386, AMD64, PowerPC and ARM, with or without stack-
caching. It is enabled by default on i386, AMD64 and PowerPC.
- Performance improvement upto 300% on Pentium 4 (NetBurst), and upto
200% on Athlon 64. Less on Core 2 Duo (upto 70% faster as it has
indirect branch prediction), and PowerPC which was already very
optimised (upto 30% faster).
- Tested on gcc 3.4 (i386, AMD64, PowerPC), 4.0 (i386), 4.1
(i386, AMD64, PowerPC, ARM), 4.2 (i386, AMD64)
- Several new command line options to control inlining:
-Xreplication : determines whether duplicate code sequences
are replicated or shared. Can be set to 'none' (no replication),
'always' (all sequences are copies) or a threshold value (e.g.
10, when sharing of a sequence reaches the threshold the sequence
is replicated).
-Xcodemem : the maximum amount of memory for super-instructions.
Once the maximum is reached no new super-instructions are generated
but existing super-instructions are reused (class unloading will
also free unused sequences). Can be set to a value or 'unlimited'.
This option can be used to limit code memory on systems with little
RAM (i.e. embedded).
-Xshowreloc : debugging option, which shows which opcodes were
determined to be relocatable, and for opcodes which aren't why
they aren't relocatable. When using stack-caching there are
three versions of each opcode (for 3 stack-cache levels).
-Xnoinlining : turns off inlining (equivalent to setting codemem
to zero).
- Opcode relocatability is determined by default at build time, but
this doesn't work when cross-compiling (so inlining is disabled).
Relocatability can be determined at runtime using configure option
--enable-runtime-reloc-checks, but this increases executable size
by approx 30%.
- Command line options -version and -showversion now shows build
information. This includes the execution engine (e.g. inline-
threaded interpreter with stack-caching), the gcc version which
was used to compile JamVM (useful for debugging) and the "built in"
boot library path and classpath.
- Ported to ARM systems using EABI. This is a full port, with hand-
coded assembler to handle the construction of a call-frame for calling
JNI native methods.
- Refactored GC to remove all possible calls which may deadlock
with threads suspended in "unsafe" operations. This includes
use of malloc/realloc/free and pthreads operations.
- In allocClass() check if gcMalloc() returns NULL (i.e. OOM).
- Copy Sun's behaviour when dealing with an empty property key or no
equals after key.
- Add java.util.concurrent.atomic.AtomicLong.VMSupportsCS8.
- In method and field access checks, put back in access check for
class (removed previously because it caused regressions, since
fixed in Classpath).
- Enable suspend on thread creation (parent thread created thread with
suspension disabled). Effects threads which immediately call a long
running native method.
- Fixed race condition in thread creation and compaction (start function
obtains class reference when it is not suspendable, if compaction
occurs, the reference may be threaded, or moved).
- Fix potential deadlock in threadInterrupt under Linuxthreads.
- Protect lock operation in resetPeakThreadsCount().
- In createJavaThread(), re-enable suspension if pthread_create fails.
- Fix race-condition in thread deletion.
- Fix bug in hash table "scavenge". This could lead to entries not being
freed, and exhaustion of Monitors on embedded systems.
- Removed use of malloc/free in thread dump. Removes potential deadlock
with threads suspended in malloc/realloc/free.
- Added symbolic link from lib/rt.jar to Classpath's glibj.zip (fixes
programs such as ecj which locates rt.jar via java.home).
- Bumped Java compatible version to 1.5.0 as Classpath is now the generics
branch (since Classpath 0.95).
JamVM 1.4.5 released on 4th February 2007
=========================================
A summary of changes since 1.4.4:
- Support for Java 1.5 Annotations. This includes the following
methods for reflection access to Annotations:
- VMClass.getDeclaredAnnotations
- java.lang.reflect.Field.getDeclaredAnnotations
- java.lang.reflect.Constructor
- getAnnotation, getDeclaredAnnotations, getParameterAnnotations
- java.lang.reflect.Method
- getDefaultValue, getAnnotation, getDeclaredAnnotations,
getParameterAnnotations
- Class sun.misc.Unsafe implemented, providing VM support for
JSR-166 (Concurrency Utilities).
- Ported to the mipsel architecture. This is a full port, with hand-
coded assembler to handle the construction of a call-frame for calling
JNI native methods. This supports the O32 ABI (for other ABIs libffi
can be used).
- Bug fix in registering references external to the heap with the GC.
The table should be locked for references registered after VM
initialisation.
- Bug fix when expanding the heap and the free-list is empty.
- Fixed race-condition when rewriting OPC_NEW in the indirect-threaded
interpreter (by default the direct-threaded interpreter is used).
- Bug fix in the GC compaction phase. The class-loader references
within the loaded DLL hashtable must be updated when the class-loader
is moved during compaction. This is a regression introduced in
JamVM 1.4.3 (DLL unloading), seen while running Eclipse.
- Bug fix in JNI_GetStringUTFLength. The reported length should not
include space for a NULL terminator.
- Various compile fixes for uClibc. Support for the JNI invocation
API requires glibc features not implemented in uClibc.
- Command line option -fullversion implemented.
JamVM 1.4.4 released on 2nd November 2006
=========================================
A summary of changes since 1.4.3:
- Full JNI Invocation API implemented, enabling JamVM to be linked into
another program.
- JNI_CreateJavaVM, DestroyJavaVM, AttachCurrentThread,
- AttachCurrentThreadAsDaemon, DetachCurrentThread
- JNI_GetDefaultJavaVMInitArgs
- JamVM is now also built as a shared library (lib/libjvm.so).
- The executable (bin/jamvm) is statically linked with this library
instead of being a wrapper. This is because the shared library
runs slower than static linking on some architectures. As JamVM
is small this is not a problem.
- Improved class-loader and shared library support
- When a class-loader (and all its classes) is unloaded all shared
libraries loaded by the class-loader are unloaded and JNI_OnUnload
called (if defined)
- A shared library can no longer be opened by two class-loaders
at once
- A class can only resolve native methods defined in shared libraries
opened by its defining class-loader
- Major re-working of thread/locking code to support additional Java 1.5
functionality
- Thread.getState() implemented
- correct thread states and their transistions (e.g. BLOCKING,
WAITING, TIMED_WAITING, etc.)
- native support for the ThreadMXBean thread system management API
- thread creation statistics (count of live, started and
peak threads)
- Information about a thread (ThreadInfo)
- execution information (thread state, stack backtrace to
a particular depth, object upon which the thread is blocked
or waiting to be notified)
- synchronization statistics (counts of the times the thread
has been blocked or waited for notification)
- Thread.interrupt() re-implemented fixing several bugs
- if a thread was waiting on a monitor, previous implementation
required the monitor lock to be obtained. If a 3rd thread
was holding this, the interrupt could not occur to avoid
deadlock. New thread-code does not require lock to be obtained.
- in rare circumstances another thread waiting on the monitor
could be notified (when there was pending notifications,
and then an interrupt, and subsequent threads waiting on the
monitor).
- a thread waiting on a thin-lock (waiting for inflation)
could erroneously report an InterruptedException
- GC bug fix for class-unloading when only using the compactor
(-Xcompactalways). The compactor in some circumstances could move
objects ontop of the object holding the native class-loader VM data
before it was freed leading to a SEGV.
- Bug fix for abstract methods which fell through previous
AbstractMethodError checks (using a stub method)
- AbstractMethodError now also gives the method name
- Bug fix to not allow abstract classes to be instantiated
- Bug fix for NULL in identityHashCode (a regression in JamVM 1.4.3)
- Bug fix for NULL in JNI method GetStringUTFLength|Chars
- Bug fix for $ in native method names
- FirstNonNullClassLoader implemented
- Access-checking bug fix. In reflection method/field access, also
check class access in addition to method/field.
- Ensure created threads have a native stack size of at least 2MB. This
fixes SEGVs due to stack overflow seen on OpenBSD/Darwin
(default 512KB).
- Property sun.boot.class.path is now also defined in addition to
java.boot.classpath. Certain applications look for the Sun property
(e.g. Dacapo bloat benchmark).
- Extra bootclasspath command line options
- bootclasspath/v overrides the default VM classes path
- bootclasspath/c overrides the default GNU Classpath classes path
- java.endorsed.dirs support added
- directories are scanned and any jar/zip files are added to the
boot classpath.
- Improved thread dump (produced via ctrl-\). Now shows thread state.
- JamVM by default now installs in its own directory (/usr/local/jamvm)
JamVM 1.4.3 released on 21st May 2006
=====================================
A summary of changes since 1.4.2:
- Heap compaction implemented. Previously on some programs the object
allocation pattern could lead to a highly fragmented heap (lots of
small holes). This caused early heap expansion, and in some cases
an OutOfMemory exception (a result of repeated heap expansion until
heap fully expanded).
JamVM now includes a mark/compact collector in addition to the
mark/sweep GC. This is normally ran after forced finalisation, and
before heap expansion. It removes fragmentation by sliding the objects
to the bottom of the heap, closing the holes.
Two new command line options can be used to control compaction :
-Xnocompact : don't do compaction and just use the mark/sweep
collector. This is equivalent to JamVM 1.4.2 behaviour.
-Xcompactalways : do compaction on every garbage-collection. In
some cases this may lead to less collections, but
the compactor is slower than the sweeper.
- The interned String table is now garbage-collected (JamVM uses its
own interned String hashtable).
- Additional Java 1.5 support
- New methods within VMClass implemented
- isMemberClass, isLocalClass, isAnonymousClass,
getEnclosingClass, getEnclosingMethod,
getEnclosingConstructor, getClassSignature.
- Generic signature support in reflection classes (Constructor, Method
Field).
- getTypeParameters, getSignature, getGenericExceptionTypes,
getGenericParameterTypes, toGenericString, getGenericType,
getGenericReturnType
- Uncaught exceptions will now use the thread's uncaughtExceptionHandler
(if available).
- Fix for Non-ASCII characters in class name parameter
- affected methods Class.ForName, ClassLoader.defineClass
- Use getcwd() instead of PWD enviroment variable for user.dir
property. This fixes problems seen on some applications.
- Fix in VMClass.defineClass on 64-bit machines (protection domain
parameter assumed to be 4 bytes).
- Minor interpreter optimisation in direct-mode with handler
prefetch (reload of handler address in aload_0/getfield pair).
- Command line options -version and -showversion now prints a "Java
compatible" version number. This is to work with shell scripts which
parse the output to get the Java version.
- Set the java.home property to the JAVA_HOME environment variable if set.
- Ported to Mac OS X on Intel.
- Runtime.availableProcessors implemented (Linux, Mac OS X and BSD
systems).
- Updated to be compatible with Classpath 0.91.
- Merged in changes to GNU Classpath's VM reference classes and
JamVM's classes.
- Various compiler warnings.
JamVM 1.4.2 released on 22nd January 2006
=========================================
A summary of changes since 1.4.1:
- JamVM now supports class garbage-collection and unloading. It is
implemented according to the clarifications to the JLS. This states
that a class may be unloaded if and only if its class loader is
unreachable. As the loader is reachable while any classes defined
by it are reachable, the class loader and all its classes will be
collected together.
- Bug-fix for field name/type lookup and obfuscated code. Previously
a minor optimisation halted the search if a name was found with the
wrong type (as a class cannot have two fields with the same name).
However, this breaks obfuscated code which renames variables. With
field resolution the optimisation is redundant, as fields are only
looked up once.
- Added stub for VMClassLoader.defineClassWithTransformers. This is
a change in the VM interface in the generics branch of Classpath
0.20.
- Various build changes :
- fix errors/warnings on Open/Free BSD. Part of this is a move
to using config.h.
- find Java compiler via path (try ecj, then jikes, gcj, javac).
- Fixed a minor garbage-collector bug. Scan phase could SEGV if a GC
occurred when a reference class was partially created.
JamVM 1.4.1 released on 28th November 2005
==========================================
A summary of changes since 1.4.0:
- As part of the GC optimisations in 1.4.0 some redundant checks were
removed. One of these was hiding a garbage-collector bug. Classes
that have not been linked should not be scanned, as their static
fields have not been initialised. The bug only manifested itself
in certain applications, as the window between loading and linking
is normally small. Found with Tomcat, but also seen with Ant.
- Fix for an array overrun in VMAccessController.getStack (native
method) on 64-bit machines.
- Support for FreeBSD.
- Support for OpenBSD (added in 1.3.3 but not previously mentioned).
- A couple of Mauve fixes relating to changing daemon status on threads
that have died.
JamVM 1.4.0 released on 20th November 2005
==========================================
A summary of changes since 1.3.3:
- Support for Soft/Weak/Phantom References
- As specified in the specification, Weak and Phantom References are
cleared as soon as they become weakly or phantom reachable. It is
left up to the VM when Soft References (which are softly reachable)
are cleared; only they must be cleared before throwing OutOfMemoryError.
JamVM clears them as a last resort, when the heap is fully expanded,
and insufficient memory can be reclaimed.
- To support Soft/Weak/Phantom references a Reference Handler thread
is now created on VM start-up. This is additional to the Finaliser
thread.
- Garbage Collector optimisations
- Re-implementation of object reference scanning via reference offset
lists. Previously, references were scanned by finding references
by following the class hierarchy.
- As part of this the object layout has changed.
- Added Java language-level access checks (e.g. access to private/protected
and package-private methods and fields). This includes access via
reflection.
- Fix for inheritance of inaccessible methods.
- Linux PowerPC build fix (this was quickly fixed in CVS).
- FFI fix. The size of ffi-type-uint on 64-bit platforms has changed between
libffi 2.00-beta and later versions. This only affected AMD64, as this
is the only platform that uses libffi.
- Fix for initiating loaders and array classes.
- Mauve tests. Many extra VM-level Mauve tests now pass (35+). These
are mostly concerned with testing boundary-conditions in class-loading,
Class.forName() and Thread.sleep(). Extra tests pass due to the
implementation of Soft/Weak/PhantomReferences and access checks.
- Classpath-0.19 merge.
- Merged in changes to GNU Classpath's VM reference classes and
JamVM's classes.
- Support for kfreebsd and Linux-powerpc64.
- Many other code tidy-ups.
JamVM 1.3.3 released on 12th September 2005
===========================================
A summary of changes since 1.3.2:
- JamVM is now 64-bit "clean".
- As part of the changes above, JamVM has been ported to:
- AMD64 under Linux:
- JamVM should also work on Pentium 4 with EM64T technology.
- PowerPC64 under Mac OS X:
- to build a 64-bit executable CFLAGS must include the flag -arch
ppc64. If no option is given a 32-bit executable is built by
default.
- JamVM should also work on PowerPC64 under Linux, if the --enable-ffi
flag is given to configure, but I have been unable to test.
- LibFFI is now supported. Upto now, all ports required the native
calling convention to be written "by hand" for each new architecture/
platform. Generic calling-convention code is now supported via libffi.
Currently this is only used for AMD64/Linux, but can be enabled for
all platforms using --enable-ffi. The "hand-written" routines should
be faster, and are used by default, but this will make porting to new
architectures/platforms easier.
- Bug-fix enabling heaps larger than 2Gb to be specified on 32-bit
architectures. On 64-bit machines, heap sizes > 4Gb are now
supported.
- Bug-fix for JNI return values smaller than 4 bytes (e.g. byte, short,
etc.) on big-endian machines.
- Under Mac OS X multiple DLL extensions will now be tried. Classpath
libraries end in .dylib, but native JNI libraries end in .jnilib.
Both are now supported.
- Backwards compatibility workarounds for Classpath-0.17 removed. JamVM
will now only work with Classpath-0.18 and CVS (as of 12th September).
JamVM 1.3.2 released on 29th July 2005
======================================
JamVM 1.3.2 is a minor feature/bug-fix release. A summary of changes since
1.3.1:
- Updated to be compatible with Classpath-0.17 and Classpath from
CVS (as of 28th July).
- Shutdown hooks are now ran on VM termination, either normally, or via user
interruption (i.e ctrl-C).
- Revised GC allocation failure policy
- Using a simple heuristic the GC attempts to maintain at least 25% heap
free. If it fails the heap is expanded, regardless of whether the
allocation request could be satisfied. This reduces frequent garbage
collection cycles when GC returns only a limited amount of memory.
- Revised Object finalization
- during GC a thread could deadlock waiting for finalization. This
occurred when a finalizer (running in the finalizer thread) attempted
to grab a lock the thread is holding.
- a minor bug fix where finalized objects waiting for the finalizer to
be ran could keep alive other finalized objects (if it had the only
reference to it).
- a minor bug fix where objects waiting for finalization could be lost
(i.e. finalize() method not called). This only happened when >1000
objects were outstanding.
- VMRuntime.runFinalization() implemented. This enables a thread to force
finalization.
- In certain circumstances a class loader would be unmarked during GC,
enabling it to be collected. This resulted in a SEGV.
- JNI FindClass now uses the current class loader, not the first non-null on
the stack.
- VMClass.getModifiers() now handles inner class attributes.
- Fix to enable build directory to be different to source directory (this was
broken in 1.3.0).
JamVM 1.3.1 released on 12th June 2005
======================================
A summary of changes since 1.3.0:
- Re-worked thread suspension enable/disable code
- implemented a fast enable/disable suspend mechanism for critical code
sections, which is now used in hash table access and heap allocation :
- much faster object allocation
- much faster primitive array allocation
- faster string interning
- removed some minor potential (as yet unseen) race conditions
- Integrated all outstanding patches
- generics branch patch, implementing VMClass.isEnum(), isAnnotation()
and isSynthetic()
- Boot library path patch (support for system property
gnu.classpath.boot.library.path)
- Enabled different min/max heap values for each architecture
- ARM values are back to the defaults for JamVM 1.2.5. Default max heap
of 128Mb is too large for typical embedded ARM systems.
- Fixed the new compiler warnings from gcc-4.0 (under Mac OS X) related
to char/signed char usage.
- Fixed compiler error on gcc-4.0 under Mac OS X 10.4 (duplicate definitions
of wait).
- Fixed rare, potential dead-lock in direct.c when preparing methods
- Fixed a bug in VMClassLoader.defineClass(), where offset or length is wrong.
- Fixed bug in DCONST_1 on mixed-endian ARM architectures (this bug was
fixed in JamVM 1.2.2 but it crept back in, due to the new interpreter
in JamVM 1.2.5).
- Improved thread dump (produced via SIGQUIT, or ctrl-\).
- Several other minor bug-fixes, and code tidy-ups.
JamVM 1.3.0 released on 31st March 2005
=======================================
A summary of changes since 1.2.5:
- Ported to Mac OS X/Darwin. JamVM has been built and tested on Mac OS X
10.3 (Panther), where it works "out-of-the-box". It should also work
on 10.2 (Jaguar) but you will need to install Fink (for dlopen
compatibility). Note only G3 and G4 machines have been tested.
- As part of this, the source layout/build has been changed to more
easily support different os/shared architectures
- The os.arch property now reports the machine architecture as follows:
- arm : ARM architecture (e.g. it previously reported armv5tel)
- i386 : IA32 (i586, i686, etc.)
- ppc : PowerPC
- The ldc bytecode now handles "constant class" as specified in JSR 202
(and introduced in Java 1.5)
- Command line options have been changed to be compatible with Sun Java.
This particularly affects bootclasspath, which must now be given using
the new syntax. Two new options are implemented :
- verbose:jni
- showversion
- Default heap sizes have been increased (again) to better reflect desktop
application heap usage :
- minimum heap is now 2Mb
- maximum heap is now 128Mb
- A race condition in class-loading has been fixed. This fixes a SEGV
with the latest postgreSQL JDBC driver. It also fixes a SEGV when
starting Eclipse on a P4 with hyper-threading enabled
- A race condition on VM initialisation has been fixed (helper threads
starting when a GC cycle has already started in the main thread).
JamVM 1.2.5 released on 1st March 2005
======================================
- Substantially modified the interpreter to implement direct-dispatching.
This considerably speeds-up dispatch, improving performance by 60% to
100% across all platforms. However, the rewritten method code takes
up on average 4 times the memory. Direct-dispatching is enabled
by default on all platforms.
- The direct-dispatched interpreter also supports stack-caching.
This is enabled by default on PowerPC and ARM.
- A further optimisation is prefetching. This is enabled by
default only on PowerPC.
- In all 7 interpreter variants are possible, controlled by the
configure options --enable-int-threading, --enable-int-direct,
--enable-int-caching and --enable-int-prefetch. For example,
./configure --disable-int-direct
will revert to the indirect-dispatched interpreter as in JamVM
1.2.4.
- Backwards compatibility with Classpath 0.13 removed (for example,
VMSecurityManager).
- Fixed a SEGV that occurs when an abstract class does not implement
all methods specified in the interfaces it implements, also implements
a finalize method which is inherited by a concrete class. When the
VM creates the dummy "miranda" methods, the finalizer method pointer
is left pointing to rubbish. This occurs with the latest postgreSQL
JDBC driver.
JamVM 1.2.4 released on 23rd January 2005
=========================================
A summary of changes since 1.2.3:
- Updated to be compatible with Classpath-0.13 and Classpath from
CVS (as of 22nd January).
- JNI enhancements introduced in JNI 1.4 implemented (NOT using
minimal implementation of simply returning NULL)
- Fix for setting locale when LANG is invalid (i.e. not locale-gen'ed)
- Fix for void method invocation using JNI (perform virtual method
lookup). This only affected methods with void return type.
- Fix for JNIEnv. JNIEnv pointer is now constant across calls from
the same thread.
- Implemented new VMStackWalker class, with optimised native methods.
This class is needed for the CVS version of Classpath.
- Default system properties can now be overridden via the command
line (using -D)
- BOOTCLASSPATH environment variable can now be used to specify
the classpath used by the bootstrap class loader. This overrides
the default path. BOOTCLASSPATH has lower priority than the command
line and is ignored if -bootclasspath, -bootclasspath/a or
-bootclasspath/p is used.
- NoClassDefFoundErrors thrown by the VM are now chained, and
show the exception that caused the error.
JamVM 1.2.3 released on 23rd December 2004
==========================================
- Fix the mistake in JamVM 1.2.2 that broke Swing/AWT :)
- Sets the locale specified in the environment and defines
System properties user.language and user.region appropriately
- PowerPC platforms : bug fix for JNI methods with very large
numbers of arguments (e.g. 14 integer/reference arguments).
- Consistency checks for zip/jar files loaded by bootstrap class
loader. A bad zip shouldn't crash the VM.
- Endian check for platforms without endian.h (e.g. cygwin)
- JamVM's VM classes are now installed and loaded from a zip file
(unless zip support is disabled in the bootstrap loader). This
stops old classes being left around from a previous version.
JamVM 1.2.2 released on 14th December 2004
==========================================
This release is primarily intended to align JamVM with recent changes
made to GNU Classpath's VM interface. As of now, JamVM 1.2.2 again
works with Classpath from CVS, and Classpath-0.12. A couple of
minor bug-fixes have also been made.
- Native methods for new VM integration class VMSystemProperties
implemented, and changes to VMRuntime.
- Bug fix for DCONST_1 on ARM machines using mixed-endian doubles
(bug was introduced in new interpreter).
- Added check for VFP soft-floating point on ARM (in addition to FPA).
- Bug fix for arraycopy and boolean arrays.
- Bug fix for JNI function GetStringUTFLength.
JamVM 1.2.1 released on 2nd December 2004
=========================================
- Standalone jar files can now be executed via the -jar command line option
- Updated to use Classpath-0.12
- Merged changes to reference VMClassLoader, reflect/Method
- Now uses Classpath's system class loader
- VMAccessController implemented
- 5-10% interpreter speed improvement
- Improved ARM platform support
- Big Endian systems
- Soft floating point
- SMP memory barriers on Intel and PowerPC
- Fix for certain Unicode chars in JNI method names
- Intel FP bug fix (Debian bug no. 260410). Use double (64-bit) rather
than extended (80-bit) precision
- Memory leak when two threads compete to load a class (rare race
condition)
- Handle SIGPIPE, stopping the VM aborting.
JamVM 1.2.0 released on 9th September 2004
==========================================
- Substantially rewritten the interpreter to use "stack-caching". This is
an optimisation to eliminate most of the intermediate loads and stores to
the operand stack. On desktop PowerPC (e.g. PPC750fx, MPC7447 with large,
on-chip L2 cache at full processor speed) it achieves a speed increase of
between 15 and 30%. On ARM (XScale PXA250) it achieves a speed-up of
50%. Unfortunately, due to the addressing modes of the IA32 (Pentium, etc.)
and the code produced by gcc, it is actually slower than the old interpreter!
Because of this, stack-caching is disabled by default on IA32.
- Zip/Jar support is implemented in the bootstrap class loader. This means
glibj.zip no longer needs to be unzipped. This includes resources.
- Fix for edge-conditions in floating-point to integer conversion (floating-
point value greater than int/long range).
- Fix for very large array allocation, where the required memory overflows a
32 bit int (fixes the SEGV with Mauve).
- Several other minor bug-fixes (e.g. ExceptionCheck was missed out of the JNI
i/f table).
JamVM 1.1.4 released on 21st May 2004
=====================================
- JNI enhancements introduced in Java 1.2 implemented.
- Updated to use GNU Classpath 0.09.
- Pre-compiled VM classes will now be rebuilt automatically if Java sources
change. Fix to enable build directory to be different to source directory.
- Deprecated compiler warnings in gcc >= 3.3.3 fixed (use of cast expressions
as lvalues). JamVM now also builds with gcc 3.5.0.
- Minor bug-fixes and speed optimisations.
- Eclipse now starts up.
JamVM 1.1.3 released on 12th April 2004
=======================================
JamVM 1.1.3 is primarily another bug-fix release. New functionality will
be included in JamVM 1.1.4.
- Resolution fixes to make JamVM 100% compatible with code produced
by javac in JDK >= 1.4 and Jikes 1.19.
- New command line options -bootclasspath/a and -bootclasspath/p to prepend
or append entries to the default bootstrap class loader.
- Default initial heap size increased to 1Mb from 256K. "Hello World" will
work with a heap of 75K, but this better reflects desktop application heap
usage. In an embedded environment -ms can be used to specify a smaller
initial heap (e.g. -ms256k).
- Bug fix for private method invocation via JNI and reflection.
- Several other minor bug-fixes.
JamVM 1.1.2 released on 29th March 2004
=======================================
JamVM 1.1.2 is primarily a bug-fix release. No new major functionality is
included, but many, many bugs have been fixed. If JamVM didn't work for you
before, give this release a go! Off the top of my head and in no
particular order:
- Arraycopy and instanceof fixed for arrays involving different dimensions
and Object element type
- Array/inner class/primitive class access flags correctly set (important
for serialization)
- Reflection API : method invoke on interface methods now works
- JNI : method invoke on interface methods now works
- getResource/getResources implemented for bootstrap class loader
- ClassLoader.findLoadedClass now handles classes initiated by a
class loader
- The thread contextClassLoader is now set
- The protection domain is now set for a class
- Many other minor bugs
JamVM now uses VMRuntime and will now only work with Classpath 0.08.
JamVM 1.1.1 released on 25th January 2004
=========================================
- Now supports classes compiled for target >= 1.2. In the past, javac inserted
synthetic methods for interface methods not implemented by abstract classes.
These are not produced if javac is used with -target 1.2, which is now the
default with JDK 1.4. JamVM now inserts these methods if they are not
supplied by the compiler.
- Class loader changes. JamVM now records initiating loaders so user-defined
class loaders should be referred to less.
- Updated to use classpath 0.07.
- Java 2 style application class loader/bootstrap class loader split
- new command line options -bootclasspath and -classpath (or -cp)
- Jar and Zip archives can now be specified in the classpath.
- bug fixes (integration of Classpath 0.06 in JamVM 1.1.0 broke instanceOf)
- Re-worked stack overflow handling. Previously, the first thread overflow
would be trapped, but further overflows would not. A thread may now catch
StackOverflowException and repeatedly overflow.
JamVM 1.1.0 released on 17th November 2003
==========================================
There's been quite a few changes, including performance improvements and
more of the specification is now implemented (should be everything now but
Runtime.exec), as well as the usual bug-fixes.
- Interface method tables are now implemented. This means an interface method
invocation should now be almost as fast as a normal virtual method.
- The full Reflection API is implemented (Constructor, Field, Method, etc.)
with primitive widening and wrapping and inner class support.
- Updated to use Classpath-0.06 rather than 0.04 (note JamVM won't work with
0.04 anymore).
- Ported to the ARM architecture.
- Re-worked exception printing - now supports 1.4 style StackTraceElements.
- Interpreter optimisations (more "fast" bytecodes).
- Command line system properties can now be specified (-Dname=value).
JamVM 1.0.0 released on 12th March 2003
=======================================
- INITIAL RELEASE
