multianewarray byte instruction in Jato

I think, multianewarray instruction was the most tough one that I have confronted so far while working on Jato. But with the help of Pekka Enberg, finally I was able to creep out of the abyss.

Initially , I assumed (very naively) that the counts for multianewarray instruction would be pushed in expression stack as EXPR_VALUE expressions. But then, Pekka pointed out that it does not work for every situation. For example, it will break in the following code :

   public int[][] newArray(int x, int y) {
   return new int[x][y];
   }

The better way would be, as Pekka suggested, to 'abuse' the EXPR_ARG. That is , converting each count expression to argument expression, so that instruction selector can automatically push appropriate values on the stack.

So in multianewarrray byte code handler, what I do is, after popping dimension values from the expression stack, wrap each expression into EXPR_ARGS. Then, in instruction selection and code emission phase, as all the count values are already pushed on stack, all I need to do is, make a call to array allocation function in jamvm.

Easy as pie , when you are in right track !

SynchMaster 920nw in My Fedora

Just got a SyncMaster 920nw 19" wide screen . A very nice monitor to have , bright clear distinct view all the times. But after plugging it to my computer , it shows a black area on my left ,as if it starts rendering from some (x,0) pixel.

So , I started to look into X configuration , and after a lot of head scratching , when I set the refresh rate to 75
Hz , it started to work perfectly . Weird !

Debugging Jato

In last few weeks , while working on arraylength bytecode instruction , I had to debug Jato . But instruction provided in readme file is rather obsolete . So I had to go through the run-suite.sh and ''reinvent the wheel" .

To debug , you have to point gnu.classpath.boot.library.path to <gnu_classpath_root>/lib/classpath and bootclasspath should contain <gnu_classpath_root>/share/classpath/glibj.zip and <jato_root>/lib/classes.zip.

The easiest way to do so is , setting the following values

GNU_CLASSPATH_ROOT=`<JATO_ROOT>/tools/classpath-config`

GLIBJ=$GNU_CLASSPATH_ROOT/share/classpath/glibj.zip

BOOTCLASSPATH=<JATO_ROOT>/lib/classes.zip:$GLIBJ

then applying usual gdb command ,i.e.,

gdb --args <JATO_ROOT>/java \
-Dgnu.classpath.boot.library.path=:$GNU_CLASSPATH_ROOT/lib/classpath \
-Xbootclasspath:$BOOTCLASSPATH -cp <JATO_ROOT>/regression class_file_name_to_debug

will launch it in debug mode. You can additionally pass any other command line option ( -Xint , -Xtrace:jit ... ) also.

The Future Of Search ?

Hmm , well , I'll be waiting for this http://futureofsearch.federatedmedia.net/archives/5

How to run a company ( Or How not to )

From a developer's perspective ;)
http://torjo.blogspot.com/2008/03/paying-your-people.html

Jato , The First Look

Usually looking into any OpenSource project is rather intimidating. But ,Jato, at the first look, did not seem that scary to me. The code base is not that large and I was somehow familiar with the field (at least I thought that !). And particularly the project owner was very nice to work with.

So , armed with git , I downloaded the source code , and started to hack on it (Who wants to go to the beach in a sunny day , when you can code ;) ) So far I have submitted patch for anewarray .

Initially ,it took times to grasp the idea . But thanks to Pekka Enberg , with his help , the ride so far is fun.

Setting Java plugin for Firefox

If you have JDK or JRE installed, enabling java in Firefox is easy.
Just make a symbolic link of libjavaplugin_oji.so resided in your JRE to your Firefox-Plugin directory.

In short ,
ln -s $JAVA_HOME/jre/plugin/i386/ns7-gcc29/libjavaplugin_oji.so /usr/lib/firefox-2.0.0.3/plugins/

will enable java in your Firefox.