Installing GNU Classpath - Last updated: December 23, 2002 First, this is a development release only! Unless you are interested in active development and debugging, or just like running random alpha code, this release is probably not for you. Please see the README file for a list of VMs that work with GNU Classpath. Note that if you are building from a non-released (CVS) version of GNU classpath, installation instructions are found in the HACKING file. ------------------------------------------------------------------ Suggested Software ------------------------------------------------------------------ For any build environment involving native libraries, these new versions of autoconf, automake, and libtool are required if changes are made that require rebuilding configure, Makefile.in, aclocal.m4, or config.h.in. - GNU autoconf 2.53 - GNU automake 1.6 - GNU libtool 1.4.2 For building the Java bytecode (.class files), one of these compilers are required. You can select which compiler using --with-jikes, --with-gcj or --with-kjc as argument to configure; the present default is gcj. The javac compiler included in any of Sun's JDKs will not work, as it will not compile java.lang.Object. - GCJ 3.2+ (part of the GNU GCC package). Note that GCC 3.3 (from CVS) is currently unreleased. - IBM jikes 1.18+. - The kjc compiler is supported with configure but we have been unable to successfully compile with it. For building the JNI native libraries, the following are required unless --disable-gtk-peer is used as an argument to configure. - GTK+ 1.2.x - libart_lgpl 2.1.0 - gdk-pixbuf (Only needed if you want to compile the native library) This package was designed to use the GNU standard for configuration and makefiles. To build and install do the following: 1). Run the "configure" script to configure the package. There are various options you might want to pass to configure to control how the package is built. Consider the following options, "configure --help" gives a complete list. --enable-java compile Java source default=yes --enable-jni compile JNI source default=no --enable-cni compile CNI source default=no --enable-gtk-peer compile GTK native peers default=no --enable-load-library enable to use JNI native methods default=yes (disabled automatically using --enable-cni) 2). Type "make" to build the package. There is no longer a dependency problem and we aim to keep it that way. 3). Type "make install" to install everything. This may require being the superuser. The default install path is /usr/local/classpath you may change it by giving configure the --prefix= option. Report bugs to classpath@gnu.org or much better via Savannah at this URL: http://savannah.gnu.org/support/?func=addsupport&group=classpath Happy Hacking! Once installed, GNU Classpath is ready to be used by any VM that supports using the official version of GNU Classpath. Simply ensure that /usr/local/classpath/share/classpath is in your $CLASSPATH environment variable. You'll also have to set your LD_LIBRARY_PATH variable (or similar system configuration) to include the Classpath native libraries in /usr/local/classpath/lib/classpath. *NOTE* All example paths assume the default prefix is used with configure. If you don't know what this means then the examples are correct. LD_LIBRARY_PATH=/usr/local/classpath/lib/classpath CLASSPATH=/usr/local/classpath/share/classpath/glibj.zip:. export LD_LIBRARY_PATH CLASSPATH More information about the VMs that use GNU Classpath can be found in the README file. Information on using the above setup with the ORP VM can be found at . ------------------------------------------------------------------ Misc. Notes ------------------------------------------------------------------ Compilation is accomplished using a compiler's @file syntax. For our part, we avoid placing make style dependencies as rules upon the compilation of a particular class file and leave this up to the Java compiler instead. The --enable-maintainer-mode option to configure currently does very little and shouldn't be used by ordinary developers or users anyway. On Windows machines, the native libraries do not currently build, but the Java bytecode library will. Gcj trunk is beginning to work under Cygwin. The mingw32 version of jikes cannot follow symbolic links, you must use a cygwin build of jikes to access this limited functionality.