In the world of Java, BEA (now Oracle) has created LiquidVM which doesn't require an OS. Likewise, there are a variety of open source projects including SANOS, JNODE OS, Project Guest VM, JavaOS, etc.
Is there an equivalent being created for .NET?
check out the .NET Micro Framework
unlike the projects suggested by Trillian which are projects to create a managed CLR OS (not what the question asked.) The .NET Micro Framework is the .NET CLR without an OS. It is commerially supported by microsoft and can be developed for using Visual Studio.
Some googling found out:
Singularity (a Microsoft research project)
Midori (another Microsoft research project, which aims to replace or integrate with a future version of Windows, especially on mobile devices)
SharpOS (an open-source GPL OS in C#)
Cosmos (an open-source BSD OS in C#)
As to how mature those systems are, you'll have to check by yourself ;).
Have you seen COSMOS?
Cosmos is an operating system project implemented completely in CIL compliant languages. The team is committed to using C#, however any .NET language can be used.
Also have a look at Singularity, a project from Microsoft Research
Related
https://www.tizen.org/ Tizen Mobile & IPad Linux very exciting.
Its allowing GCC. But does it run Dalvik JVM or OpenJDK?
Will then it will be compatible with 32-bit or 64-bit compilers?
Or we need to convert our source to be re-compiled using ARM compilers? of GCC?
Will it be easier to port C, Java code's now to Tizen? Where its complex and not natively available under Android phones/platforms?
As far as I know, it will be possible to package applications as DEB or RPM packages, you will be able to include an embedded VM (for example Avian VM) if you want, probably no JVM will be installed by default. JavaSE Embedded and OpenJDK should work (maybe with small modifications) under Tizen even though the documention only mentions C/C++ for native apps and HTML5/JavaScript for web apps. Moreover, there is no Java binding to its native APIs yet except those already available for Linux ARM and for APIs supported in any Linux distribution (for example JOGL 2.0). If you really need some help to use Java under Tizen, please contact the JogAmp Foundation here. Xerxes already succeeded in running JOGL 2.0 under Meego as you can see here, why not doing the same thing under Tizen?
N.B: Don't expect official Java support under Tizen.
If you check this two presentation from May:
Tips and Tricks: Designing Low-Power Native and Web Apps on page 3.
and this
Implementation of Standard Accessibility APIs for Tizen on page 9.
You see that basically Tizen will have two APIs and hence two types of applications:
Native;
Web(HTML5) pretty well documented already.
So no JVM or OpenJDK, don't know the Native API apps binaries will be compiled to but probably will know soon.
Since Tizen is pretty much in development you can check from time to time the official site.
We are starting some new app development but because of special business requirements, need to support back to Mac OS X 10.3 as well as PPC/Intel CPUs.
The latest Xcode 4 isn't an option, from what I can tell it only goes back to 10.5 and doesn't support PPC at all. Is Xcode 3 an option? Would it be easier to just use Java?
P.S. From anyone experienced in either, can you please comment on some of the pros and cons you've bumped into?
EDIT
As requested, here's a brief overview of the app:
The app needs to talk to a server which will expose JSON web services. The app itself needs to be built in a way that will allow plugins (not 3rd party, but in-house with the ability to customize which features the customer owns). Each plugin will gather specific information about the host OS - such as running apps, users, CPU usage, etc.
If you can find a way to make Objective-C work with your requirements, it is worth it in my opinion.
I myself am a former Java developer who has moved into the creation of native Mac OS and iOS apps. I tried using Java for some of my early Mac OS projects and always found the support to be lacking. It can be done, but it was always more difficult than it should've been and never worked as well as a native app.
Here is a link to another SO post that describes some workarounds for getting older SDK versions working in Xcode 4. I can't vouch for how well they work with current versions of Xcode, but it's worth trying.
In view of your requirements, especially the need to do some system evaluation, I would strongly recommend to use Objective-C and the Apple development environment. You will have a lot of difficulties using Java to retrieve the neccessary information about the host OS, that you want to use in your application.
You could try to run Xcode with older SDK versions, but I have virtually no experience on OSX to give you solid advice on how to do this.
EDIT: My Xcode 4 gives me an option to select a "Deployment Target", where I can go back to supporting 10.1, but I have no idea, if this is the right thing...
Well,
Apple isn't a Java friendly company. You don't have all the bindings you may need on their JVM.
So I strongelly recommend (given that your project will be Mac OS X only) Objective C instead of Java
I program in Java but on Mac OS X, Objective-C is better than Java because it is faster and developed by Apple itself. Moreover, if you develop a program in Objective-C, you can sell it on the Mac App Store while if you develop it with Java you can't.
So go with Objective-C.
I'm using JMF in my Java GUI and before downloading the packages from Oracle, it asks you which version you want:
Linux
Solaris SPARC
Windows
Does this mean my Java (cross-platform by nature) application WON'T be cross platform any more?
There is a 100% pure Java implementation, but that does not support all codecs and doesn't run as efficiently as the version using native code. So, effectively, the JMF is not fully cross-platform.
The developers justify this by considering the JMF an extension to the Java platform itself rather than just a library: just like you have to download a specific JVM for your platform, but can reuse your source and object code unchanged, you need a platform-dependent JMF implementation, but the JMF clients can be reused unchanged.
JMF isn't a pure Java API, so it'll only work where it's officially ported.
I want to wrap a website and create an application around it (kind of like the iPhone/iPod Facebook app) and i want the application to be as portable as possible so with a very few modification to the code it can run on pc, mac, iPod, android or any other.
I know that Java is known for it's portability but i dislike it and i don't know about QT.
I know this question is quite subjective but can you give me a couple of opinions and reasons for them any way?
Thanks in advance,
Dante
Qt is portable enough for the major platforms (Windows, Linux and MacOS). It has the advantage of being native code, so no virtual machine is needed. And it provides rich graphics and other powerfull features, and the GUI look and feel of the specific platform.
If you are considering the same code base to be shared between desktop and mobile platforms, think again. There are different constraints in terms of resources, screen dimensions, etc. Qt can be used for some mobile platforms (mainly Symbian, Maemoo), Java for Android and ObjectiveC/C++ for iPhone/iPod. So a cross mobile platform application using the same technology is not feasible (at least for the moment).
Why Java is still used in web development? I'm just curious..
There are a number of reasons:
1. It is by no means a dead language. There are thousands of Java developers out there.
2. Many available Java developers means that it relatively easy to find maintenance programmers if necessary.
3. The Java / J2EE architecture is robust and reasonably elegant. It makes it possible to architect well built applications.
4. The free tools available for it are enterprise ready. For example, Apache / Tomcat / JBoss are a solid foundation to build a web-app from.
5. Excellent support for developers. Eclipse is one of the best developer platforms available. Ant and Maven support for Java is excellent.
6. There is a good availability of third-party (and open-source) libraries and Eclipse plug-ins for most of the additional functionality that might be needed but does not come in the core libraries.
7. There is also great support tools from commercial vendors: ORacle; IBM / Rational; etc.
8. Updated versions with newer language constructs are constantly being developed.
In short, it is a good tool for the job. It is compares favourably to other development platforms (.Net, Ruby, etc), and perhaps is better than some.
Simple. It's a cross platform environment, that is clearly defined, and controlled. Sure, Sun has a big deal of say in what is available in the Java environment, but there is plenty of 3rd party support and development in the Java environment.
Yes, Java applications start up slightly slower than Native applications, but take a look at VUZE... Once it's started, it's nearly native speed (or at least it was when I was using it). With the JIT (Just in Time) compilers, code caching, and other features, there isn't much of a reason that there would be a major speed penalty...
One big reason I think is because it's platform independent meaning they can easily run on all operating systems as long as you have the Java Runtime Environment installed. This could allow you to, for example, compile code in Windows and deploy on Unix.
I would also add that while this is only a con against .Net, your application server doesn't have to be Windows so it is cheaper to throw more hardware at it.
For the same reason as why COBOL and FORTRAN still exist. Because the language has proven itself to be robust and reliable.
Compare it with cars. Some people want the latest models because it has more power, better speed, improved features and whatever more. Others will just use a reliable car that's made to last for many years without much need for additional maintenance. Some buy a new car every 3 years, others will use their cars for half a century or more.
When talking about Java & the web, people seem to happily mix things by concentrating on Java applications deployed with Web Start (or even Applets), and forgetting that Java is a common language for implementing plain old dynamic web sites (or web applications). The latter is especially true for larger, more "enterprisey" systems. Even if on the desktop Java never really took off, on the server side it certainly did.
Without going into much detail, a couple of reasons why Java is used for creating web sites / applications:
It's a tried and true approach for building large-scale web apps. Either using just the basic (Java EE) technologies of Servlets and JSP, or newer frameworks built on top of those, such as JSF, Wicket or Google Web Toolkit. (Just one example of high scalability: Gmail is implemented in Java, using Google Web Toolkit.)
A mind-boggling amount of Java libraries exist, for all kinds of tasks — both open-source and commercial ones. If you need some in the backend of your app it may make a lot of sense to do the whole app using the same technology.
There are a lot of skilled Java developers out there — something that may affect tech desicions when launching (larger) projects
When creating a web interface for, or integrating into, an existing Java enterprise system (which are common) it may be beneficial to use the same language
Edit: I also agree with Doug about the tools and developer support. For example, IntelliJ IDEA may well be the most advanced IDE for any language (and I've heard this also from people who've used Eclipse and Visual Studio extensively... ;-) )
It's ubiquitous. The tools are great across the board. It's powerful. The community is huge. There is an amazing amount of available libraries / products / toolkits / frameworks. The JVM is great.
You can build cathedrals with this language. Those tend to stand for centuries.
Since Java doesn't run on the iPad, doesn't that hurt Java web development? Developing a web application that supports desktop and mobile is a possible path, but if your site uses Java or Flash, you have eliminated that opportunity.
We have a web application that is for both desktop and mobile (supports swiping, zooming, and such using jQuery). We decided against Java, Flash, and Silverlight because they do not work with iPad. The iPad is a growing base and web applications will have to keep up to support it.
It will be interesting to see how this affects web development with Java... time will tell.