Re: JNIPort for VisualWorks

>Hi all,
>
>I think it's about time to get this off my chest:
>
>I've been working on porting Chris Uppal's JNIPort to VisualWorks.
>JNIPort is a class library which allows Java code to be invoked from
>Smalltalk, using a regular Java VM to execute the Java code. If you
>are interested in details, have a look at
>http://www.metagnostic.org/DolphinSmalltalk/JNIPort.html
>
>JNIPort would allow instant access to any Java class library, and
>even calling back into VisualWorks (although with some limitations
>when multithreading is involved). This would open up a whole new
>world - e.g. monitoring a VisualWorks application server using JMX,
>integration of Java messaging using JMS, using all of those free and
>commercial Java libraries available on the market. Chris even has an
>example for opening a Swing GUI showing a hierarchy of Smalltalk
>classes - certainly not something you would want to do in a real
>application, but it shows what's possible.
>
>The current state of the VisualWorks port is "can calculate the abs
>of a float, but crashes with access violations when trying to do
>something useful (after successfully generating wrappers for about
>100 real Java classes)". Currently, it's Windows only, but it should
>be easy to include other platforms. The original Dolphin Smalltalk
>version works perfectly, of course - the access violations are a
>feature which I introduced. Once this bug is corrected, the rest
>should be easy.
>
>For various reasons, I haven't had enough time to finish the port
>during the last few months, and I hope that someone from the
>community might help with debugging the access violations. This does
>not mean that I'm abandoning the project, leaving the mess to
>someone else. I still want to do it, but given the circumstances, I
>think that it might make more sense if I give others a chance to
>participate. ;-) I'll post the current state of the code to the
>public repository as soon as possible (probably next weekend)
>together with instructions about other files from metagnostic.org
>which you'll need.
>
>Just a quick check to see if it's worth the effort: Anybody
>interested, either in using JNIPort, or in participating?
>
>Joachim Geidel