Steps to use Jikes RVM and GNU Classpath on GNU/Linux

  1. Install jikes-1.18 on your machine, if you do not already have it. Jikes can be retrieved from http://oss.software.ibm.com/developerworks/opensource/jikes/
  2. Check out the GNU Classpath head into some directory (hereinafter called <classpathdir>)
    • CVS root for GNU Classpath is :psevser:anoncvs@subversions.gnu.org:/cvsroot/classpath
    • Given that root, in <classpathdir> do `cvs checkout classpath'
  3. Build and configure GNU Classpath
    • Do the aclocal; autoheader; automake; autoconf thing in <classpathdir>/classpath (see HACKING for details)
    • Make a directory '<classpathdir>i686' (i.e. <classpathdir> now contains a 'classpath' and a 'i686')
    • In i686, do a '../classpath/configure --enable-jni --with-jikes'
    • In i686, do 'make'

    You can, of course, use your own classpath tree if you have one. But you must make an 'i686' directory parallel to the top of your tree, and do configure there as specified above.

  4. Download Jikes RVM into some directory (hereinafter <rvmroot>)
    • :pserver:anoncvs@www-124.ibm.com:/usr/cvs/jikesrvm
    • Given that root, in <rvmroot>, do 'cvs checkout rvm'
  5. Edit <rvmroot>/rvm/config/i686-pc-linux.eb to reflect your system. Everything should be fine, except CLASSPATH_SRC, which should become <classpathdir>
  6. Set the following environment variables (bash style below, mutatis mutandum)
          export RVM_ROOT=<rvmroot>
      export RVM_HOST_CONFIG=<rvmroot>/rvm/config/i686-pc-linux.eb
      export RVM_TARGET_CONFIG=<rvmroot>/rvm/config/i686-pc-linux.eb
      export RVM_BUILD=<some directory that can be trashed or created>
      export PATH=<rvmroot>/rvm/bin:${PATH}
  7. Build Jikes RVM
    • jconfigure -D RVM_WITH_GNU_CLASSPATH=1 BaseBaseSemiSpace
    • cd $RVM_BUILD
    • ./jbuild

Many variations are possible. Be warned that BaseBaseSemiSpace instructs jconfigure to prepare a version of JikesRVM that is slow to run but quick to build. After verifying that that works, you may want to try FastAdaptiveSemiSpace instead (just change the last argument to jconfigure; you will probably want to change RVM_BUILD so that the FastAdaptive image does not destroy the BaseBase one). That will prepare a Jikes RVM version that takes much longer to build (~25 minutes on a fast machine) but will run programs much faster. Also be warned that you currently need rather a lot of memory to build the FastAdaptiveSemiSpace image; recommended at least 512MB.

If you have problems, refer to specific install documentation for each project. Thank you to Julian Dolby for providing these instructions.



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Updated: $Date: 2006/12/17 19:53:07 $ $Author: mark $