IBM’s Jikes Java compiler is now available for the HP 3000 thanks to LegacyJ, which ported Jikes to several platforms where a port was not yet available. LegacyJ decided to make these ports available to the general public and is offering them on an as-is basis, without support. It’s a compiler that translates Java source files as defined in the Java Language specification into the bytecoded instruction set and binary format defined in the Java Virtual Machine Specification. While the 3000 has an included javac Java compiler, Jikes has several advantages, the primary ones being high performance and dependency analysis. Jikes performs a dependency analysis on Java code that provides incremental builds and makefile generation. As for performance, LegacyJ’s Brian Sullivan said at the SIG-Java meeting last month that developers could expect compiles 10 times faster using Jikes. “It speeds up the development process when you’re developing on the 3000 itself,” Sullivan said. SIG-Java co-chair Gavin Scott said that if HP would replace the standard Java compiler with Jikes it would be great, because most developers’ first experience is typing in the “Hello World” program and waiting a long time for it to compile. “It’s not a real good first impression,” Scott said. Sullivan said running Jikes on the slowest 3000, a Series 918, can yield faster compiles than running the javac compiler on a fast Windows NT system.

Jikes is not a complete development environment — IBM points out that it is “simply a command-line compiler. It should not be considered a replacement for more complete tools, such as Source Navigator or IBM’s VisualAge for Java, which provide sophisticated graphical development environments.” Download a pre-compiled MPE binary of Jikes from Legacy J at www.legacyj.com/jikes/jikesmpe.tar.gz. You will need to run tar and gunzip for .gz files or uncompress for ..Z files on your HP 3000 system. HP’s not working on a faster, native compiler for Java on the 3000, in part because its HotSpot virtual machine in MPE/iX 7.0 Express 1 met performance goals.