[NTLK] .java != .class

From: Sean Luke (sean_at_cs.gmu.edu)
Date: Fri Mar 08 2002 - 09:48:54 EST


On Friday, March 8, 2002, at 08:54 AM, Eric Engle wrote:

> A few days ago I asked whether it was possible to run
> java directly on the newt.
>
> In fact it is!
>
> http://mywebpages.comcast.net/saweyer/waba/dev/wabanewton_usecreate.htm#CreateNewtonN
>
> You need to have all the waba libraries - but on my
> 120 O.S. 2 it works! It really works! It lets you
> compile raw java into a package! Very very nice!

Eric, you can take it from me -- Steve and I wrote Waba for the Newton.
You CANNOT compile raw java into a Waba package on the Newton.

What WabaTester did was take a .jar file of packages from your
Inbox (slurped in with Sloup or whatnot) and wrap it up into package
so you could run it. That's basically the same thing that Warp/Exegen
does. But you have to have classes precompiled in your .jar file.
You cannot take .java files and compile them to .class files on the
Newton without a java compiler.

A little history. When I was plugging away at the VM, Steve was
working on getting .class files wrapped up as .pkg packages, and
providing me with an interface to them (basically a function call
where I'd ask Steve's program to give me a class, and it would send
me the class as a binary object). Steve's had a lot of experience
producing
packages out of downloaded information through his Newtscape tools.
So he built WabaTester, which let him download the .class files as
a .jar file, then press a button and wrap them up as a .pkg file on
the Newton. It was our first way of getting Java code to the VM
for testing. This packaging code was all written in NewtonScript. Then
he moved it to the NTK, so you could package files and libraries on
the Mac or Windows. Finally he worked on writing a version in Java
(which is the modern Warp/Exegen extensions for the Newton) which is
what we use now.

Sean

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