Class tree compilation "from zero"

[Patrick Tullmann]

golubovsky at altavista.net wrote:
> To summarize my question: does there exist a java compiler which is
> able to compile java sources on completely foreign tree and which
> may be forced manually to ignore the absence of some referred
> classes or their native libraries?

I've done exactly this.  I've used Sun's javac to compile my project.
It does not get confused between the .classes for the compiler and the
.classes for the compilation (e.g., you can compile a version of
java.lang.Object that doesn't quite match Sun's java.lang.Object).  I
find that passing the *complete* list of Java files in my project to
the compiler all at once is the best way to avoid confusion.  That is,
make sure it doesn't have to search the classpath to find any
dependencies, put everything it needs on the javac command line.

I'm not sure if pizza can handle this.  (I don't know why it wouldn't
be able to, but I haven't tried it.)

> Probably such a compiler must be written in C... Does anybody know
> about such a compiler (opensource) other than guavac?

Jikes is a very good tool if you're going to be compiling lots of Java
code.  http://www.research.ibm.com/jikes/

-Pat

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Pat Tullmann                                       tullmann at cs.utah.edu
      That which does not kill you just didn't try hard enough.