Tuesday, December 16, 2008

Testing the MIKA JVM

Downloading mika requires subversion as there seem to be no tarballs available for download.
Subversion requires port 3690, plus other tools.

Mika's repository is :
http://www.k-embedded-java.com/mika/trac/wiki/DownloadMikaNew

The dependencies are: jikes and jam.

Jikes is a java compiler from IBM. It is available as an rpm for FC4. No problems installing it.

Jam is a set of Ant scripts for building java applications. Just run configure, make, and make install. However, my FC4 has some broken links: /etc/alternatives/java_sdk_exports.
I had to edit the link to point to the installed JDK: /usr/lib/jvm/java-1.4.2-gcj

To build mika, I had to edit the Configuration/cpu/arm file, where the toolchain executables are defined. It wrongly assumes that the compiler was arm-linux-gcc, ignoring the CC variable.

To run the build process, type:
ant -DPLATFORM=default -DJAM.PLATFORM=arm-linux

Results are similar to the Skelmir's VM but with a different balance: setVisible is 3 times faster, but the screen creation is 3 times slower. The net performance is more or less the same.


Mika looks quite lightweight in terms of the flash footprint required.

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