Java for OS/2 and eComStation

Java is a very popular sophisticated programming environment. Applications written in the Java language are run inside a virtual machine (Java Virtual Machine, JVM) which provides a nearly identical behavior on all platforms that have a JVM implementation available. This "write once, run anywhere" approach means that developers can support a multitude of platforms while only having to maintain one code base. For users, availability of a current Java for OS/2 and eComStation means access to a huge number of existing applications.

For more information about Java, read this ​article about Java in Wikipedia.

Previously, Java had been made available for OS/2 and eComStation by IBM, Golden Code and Innotek. However, new versions with many changes and improvements have been released since then and current applications require a current JVM implementation. This project will port such a current JVM to OS/2 and eComStation. Dmitriy Kuminov, who is well-known for his work on the Qt 3 and 4 ports, has been hired as chief developer.

This project aims at porting the open-source implementation of the Java Platform, Standard Edition, known as OpenJDK, to the OS/2 operating system. You can get more information about OpenJDK and related projects at the ​official OpenJDK home page.

Sponsoring

Partial funding is already provided by several companies and individuals, with Mensys BV being the main sponsor, but we still need to cover an amount of 8,000 EUR. If you are interested in sponsoring Java please contact Silvan Scherrer (silvan dot scherrer at aroa dot ch) directly or buy sponsoring units (like explained below).

In case you wonder what happened: Initially, funding was fully assured but one sponsor decided to redirect funds to another OS/2-related project. We did not loose the sponsor completely, but this project did.

If you would like to contribute to this port, you are welcome to buy a sponsoring unit for that at Mensys. 100% of that money will be transferred to the developers.

The Mensys sponsor link is: ​http://www.mensys.com/shop/NetlabsJava6

Sponsoring Barometer

Java GA

last update at 24st November 2011

	Euro	%
required sum	8000	100
sponsored sum	8000	100.0
remaining sum		0.0

Java Plugin (Enhanced)

last update at 2nd December 2011

	Euro	%
required sum	1500	100
sponsored sum	240	16.0
remaining sum	1260	84.0

Current Status

As of the 27th of June, 2011, the project has entered the GA (general availability) stage.

Latest Version

The latest version of OpenJDK 6 is 1.6.0-b22 GA released on 27.06.2011. This is an official build intended for general use. This build brings a long-awaited improvement that prevents Java applications from crashing on SMP systems and a bunch of minor fixes.

The more detailed list of changes can be found here​.

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IMPORTANT UPDATE. Odin32 runtime version 0.6.21659 that was originally required for this GA release of OpenJDK contains a bug that causes frequent crashes in DOSCALL1 when running many Java applications. Please update Odin to version 0.6.21668 (the link is in the table below) to fix this issue. See ticket:129 for more info.

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Version 1.6.0-b22 GA is available for downloading in the following packages and formats.

Note that there is no "mpusafe" archives any more since Java should now work fine on SMP computers. If you still need "mpusafe" behavior for some reason, you may manually mark all *.exe files in the ZIP archives using either the execmode tool (coming with eComStation) or the markexe utility (which you can find e.g. in the OS/2 Toolkit).

Prerequisites

GCC 4 Core Libraries	​ZIP	GCC 4 runtime libraries are needed for all Odin32 based installations.
Odin32 Library	​WPI	Odin32 runtime libraries version 0.6.21668 is needed for all OpenJDK packages.
xsystray widget	​WPI	Extended system tray widget for XCenter/eCenter version 0.1.1 is needed to support system tray functionality in Java applications.

OpenJDK Packages

OpenJDK 6 JRE	​ZIP	JRE package needed to run Java programs.
OpenJDK 6 SDK	​ZIP	SDK package needed to compile Java programs.

If you want to play with the latest development version, you can check it out directly from the SVN repository. In order to do so you need to download and install the subversion client for eCS (OS/2). Use the following command to check out the full source tree to a <local_directory>:

svn checkout http://svn.netlabs.org/repos/java/trunk <local_directory>

The required tools and build instructions are described in the README​ file.

Reporting Bugs

Reporting bugs and requesting new features is done through the ticket system. You can view existing tickets, add comments to them and create new tickets using the corresponding buttons at the top of every page. If you want to submit a new bug or request a feature, please use the Search function first to make sure there is no ticket for this task already created.
We review the tickets regularly and leave comments if we need more info. So please revisit the ​Feedback analysis as often as possible. If we leave some comment on a ticket and don't get feedback from the ticket creator, the ticket will be closed some weeks later.

Anonymous access to the ticket system has been restricted due to multiple attacks of stupid spammers we've been suffering from lately. In order to create a new ticket or comment the existing one, you need to login with your Netlabs login ID. If you do not have a login ID, you can request one at ​http://www.netlabs.org/en/site/member/member.xml. We are sorry for any inconvenience, but at the present time this is the only way to avoid extremely annoying spam.

Some words about Odin

Yes our Java6 is Odin based. But it's not like the Odinized Java 1.4, which took the Windows DLL and EXE.
Odin based means that we build everything natively from the Win32 source code and don't use any Windows DLLs at all. Of course, we use Odin DLLs that implement Win32 GUI controls on top of PM (among other things). But as Odin is also built natively we consider our Java6 project as a native port.
More over, building from Win32 sources natively lets us apply fixes and improvements to the original application which would be not possible with the Odinized approach.

List of working applications

• JavaApplication

Recent changes

Nov 18, 2012

• JavaApplication (diff)

Mailing Lists

Project discussion is done through mailing list conversations. Currently, the following mailing lists are available:

• java-dev()netlabs.org ​[http://news.gmane.org/gmane.org.netlabs.java.devel read online

This mailing list is for developers of Java for eCS (OS/2). All ticket changes are automatically posted to this list. Please don't post user questions there!

Credits

• Silvan Scherrer (management)
• Dmitriy Kuminov (development)
• Christian Hennecke (initial PR)
• Mensys BV (most funding)

• netlabs.org (hosting & support)

• Sun, Oracle

We also want to thank all individuals and organizations who made donations to this project and helped to make it happen.

Screenshots