Reply

The Harmony Project Beseeches the Bountiful Eclipse Foundation

At 10:22 PM on May 8, 2006, R.J. Lorimer wrote:

This news is a little bit old (4 days), but it merits discussion given how... artistic... the request for assistance was.

Geir Magnusson Jr., one of the key members of the Harmony Project has been using some clever prose on the Harmony-Dev mailing list in the hopes to get some help from the Eclipse foundation for Harmony. To make this more fun, let me start by giving you his cleverly posed words of prayer:

Oh Mighty Eclipse Foundation,

Thou art soest bountiful, we praise your munificence, especially that which compiles the java.

We beseech thee, in thy mercy, to offer to your lowly servants that which we covet alone in it's beauty, without thy holy bloat, for while that which wraps the compiler of java nourishes those without the divine IDEA, we do not deserveth such goodness, nor have the richness of time or heavenly bandwidth.

We ask this humbly, and with averted gaze as befitting our station.

The Harmony Project

While of course, the natural first reaction (after catching your breath from laughing) is to bask in the treatment of Eclipse as some deity, we do have to face the fact that there is an ever-so-subtle cry for help lacing this prayer (read between the lines of humor). If you are like Mike Milinkovich , you're probably thinking this:

I've tried parsing the prayer a few times to delete the sarcasm and understand exactly what you're asking for, but as with most prayers, the language appears to be imprecise.

What *exactly* is it that you're looking for?

Geir did clarify the point shortly there after with this email:

There was actually zero sarcasm intended there. I was just hoping to get your attention. I've used this format effectively w/ the JCP as well.

The only comment that I thought might get taken the wrong way was the "bloat" comment, but from the perspective of being interested in getting the java compiler and getting in a 100MB download....

So - can we get the Java compiler hosted officially somewhere? Right now, for the harmony classlib, we ask people to dig it out of the eclipse distro, and the contributed build script for the new VM from Intel does that same thing automatically. Lots of extra bits floating through the internets...

I think it would also assist adoption - it would make it easier for other projects to use it via ant or maven jar fetches.

Of course, if it is already that way somewhere, and I'm just clueless, I deserve whatever drubbing you can aim my way

thx

geir

Tim Ellison was kind enough to point out that you can, in fact, use the JDT binary download - which comes in at 19 megs.

Other than that point, however, there has been no subsequent discussion on how to get a stripped down, 'only-what-you-need' copy of the JDT compiler as a JAR file from Eclipse.org. I don't think it needs explaining why Harmony may be interested in this component! Can you provide feedback on how you get the JDT compiler?

Incidentally, for those curious, the Harmony project is moving forward at break-neck pace. There hasn't been much publicity or 'fluff', but watching the mailing list, it's clear that they are 'all go, no show' right now; they have contributions coming in left and right.

8 replies so far ( Post your own)