[Coco] DriveWire in Java

[Steven Hirsch]

On Thu, 10 Dec 2009, John W. Linville wrote:

> On Thu, Dec 10, 2009 at 10:50:54AM -0500, Aaron Wolfe wrote:
>> I have uploaded Linux and Mac OS X versions to
>> http://aaronwolfe.com/coco/dwserver
>>
>> These are not as tested as the Windows version, but I have booted
>> NitrOS-9 using both of them.  The GUI definitely doesn't look as nice
>> as on the Windows version, but I've found there are differences even
>> running on Win XP vs Windows 7. It looks like I'm going to have to
>> learn more about relative component alignments and avoid any absolute
>> positioning.
>
> Once again, Java demonstrates its "write once, debug everywhere"
> style of "platform independence"... :-)

Don't even get me started...  As you are finding out, Java fights you 
tooth and nail when you attempt to drill down to low-level notions such as 
guaranteeing data storage sizes and layout.  To do this reliably and 
portably, you may want to abstract the data marshaling/un-marshaling under 
a JNI extension written in C.

This does not even delve into the explosion of different and disjoint 
levels of JREs.  At one point I had about five different JRE environments 
installed to satisfy a small handful of "portable" applications that would 
only run with one exact revision level of one _vendor's_ Java 
implementation.

My experience is that applications in Perl, Ruby and Python are far, far 
more portable in the real world.  You have my sympathies!

Steve


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