For the last couple of years I’ve been working on j2me exclusively and haven’t released any of the PC/MAC projects that I’d been working on in the meantime. Does this answer your question?
well cya in about 6 months, 1 year, 2 years, or something around there :).
I programmed C++ before java, I got annoyed cause there was no BASE C++ language.
let me elaborate. If I took exact code from some1 and put into my compiler, it didnt work. I would get errors he didnt get.
I was very frusterated, then my friend java came along…
You’re out of date. OpenJDK is released under the GPL with linking exception.
Who? What? Where? Why?
When you’re bundling it and deploying it as a standalone application, there’s not much reason to go to C/C++. People are downloading hundreds of megabytes to view their favorite movies, and your tipically EA game patch is massive too. Demos are over a gigabyte. Who cares about an additional 15 or 20MB - even if that increases your game from 3MB to 23MB. Bandwidth is cheap these days: 35 EUR for 1TB per month.
Futher, as , orangytang said, the IDEs for Java are so… darn good, that it takes a very determined person to abandon Java. You can’t buy such productivity elsewhere (at the expense of some acceptable performance loss).
Anyway, if you’re abandoning Java, you might want to look at Blitz. I recall princec developed some small stuff, and almost ditched Java for it. For unknown reasons he is still here 
Of course there is, it’s called the C++ standard.
However if you’re writing (bad) C++ code which doesn’t conform to the standard or relies on implementation quirks then it’s not surprising that you have problems. Bad programmers can write bad code in any language.
Yes, yes we can
Kev
It is, however, pretty much impossible to write Java code that doesn’t compile without going through a very small checklist (jars on compiler path, target correct version).
Re: hacking the JVM - just delete every .dll you can until it stops working, then add the last one back again. Then do the same for packages in rt.jar (it’s just a zip file). Otherwise, just embed the entire VM in your game. Molebox is entirely optional and completely unnecessary.
Cas
I was looking at it actually. But it’s BASIC; an enhanced version nonetheless, but basic is basic is basic…
the full 6u12 installer for windows is 15.67 MB large. How much smaller is the manually striped down JRE capable to run a game?
I got a working JVM, compressed with LZMA at 1.6MB, it fits on a floppy!
No AWT, no Swing, just able to run LWJGL.
I just kept every class that was printed when my application was run with:
-verbose:class
And then re-adding sun.* packages until it worked again. This strategy is rather risky, because the JVM might need more classes on other operating systems, or Locales.
But getting it under 5MB (LZMA compressed) is very doable. Just be sure none of the JARs are stored with compression, as that ruins the LZMA algorithm.
wow, thats even smaller than the java kernel capable to run hello world. Cool experiment.
I hope sun will resurrect the java kernel in java 7. (wasn’t it once _the key feature of the “consumer jre”?)
confused
- Go to http://java.sun.com/
- Go to the Java SE downloads
- Pick a JRE
- Select one:
Windows Kernel Installation
jre-6u12-windows-i586-p-iftw-k.exe 0.22 MB
Windows Online Installation
jre-6u12-windows-i586-p-iftw.exe 0.58 MB
I never tried the Kernel Installation, but… AFAICS is doesn’t need resurrecting?
(or is it currently removed in Java 7?)
I think what he meant was that java kernel hasn’t yet been ported to Java 7.
Dmitri
Well, I hope sun continues to improve the installer since i really think it has potential.
The kernel installer feels a bit unfinished or not properly tuned. I think project jigsaw could make it interesting again since it is a more formal way to split the jdk.
(disclaimer: the last kernel installer i tested was u10 final)
a few points which could be further improved:
-start downloading remaining parts of the JRE immediately instead of on demand
The background kernel installer will currently continue anyway until the whole jre is installed. I never understood why it is waiting until the user starts the first applet.
-i want a way to bundle the kernel with my application
something like this would be IMO perfect:
javakernel -swing myapp.jar
this would mean:
- install the kernel if not yet installed
- make sure swing is ready before myapp starts
- start myapp and also start downloading the remaining jre in background
- if jre already installed just behave like ‘java myapp.jar’
you need a desktop shortcut? javakernel myapp.jnlp would be the next step 
this would introduce another way how to deploy your app as alternative to webstart. If we would have a clean way to deploy a minimum java runtime with our apps we wouldn’t have to think about -verbose:class hacks and “application private” jre deployment…
You’ll quickly run into more and more commandline options. Maybe your application is only known to work in a specific version of the JVM. All those options can already be set in a JNLP file. The “required modules” parameters could be moved into the JNLP file, and you’d be done.
i was more talking about first deployment (@see kernel installer). If everyone would already have java installed, the java download page on java.com for windows would probably only consist of the famous dancing duke applet with latest jre as minimum requirement. (in a perfect world where everything works reliable)
If you don’t like flags, remove point 2). the “preinstall module x” flag wasn’t the main idea behind the whole thing anyway, introducing those kind of flags before having a definition of modules isn’t very productive also (jigsaw is targeted for 7).
Webstart is great (in theory) but it isn’t always a good idea. I recently wrote a NetBeans RCP app which required java 6 specific for a company internal training. I ended up bundling the whole jdk (“preinstalled”) with my zip file. Unzip -> doubleclick on the nb.exe and the app was running
this could work for consumers too…
I meant the JNLP launcher could be part of the Kernel.
It would require the JNLP GUI to be written in C/C++, but that would be the ideal launcher, IMO.
Quick OT question. I got 1 PM and my mailbox is 100% full. Is that normal??
No, sounds like a setup bug on the forum. (Continue PM conversation by email - send an enquiry on Puppygames to me and I’ll pick it up later when I get home)
Cas