Java Platform

[Claes Wikstrom]

Richard Emberson writes:
 > 
 > Looking over the platforms supported by Erlang I was wonder if
 > there was any thoughs about or an effort underway to make 
 > the Java Virtual Machine a supported platform. What are the issues
 > involved with such a task.
 > 

I think that Bogdan Hausman looked into this some time ago, the
result was not all that good though, I would be a tremendous work
just to get Erlang to run in a browser. I personally don't think
it's worth the effort. Since java already runs nicely ... ehhhh in the
browser, nobody needs erlang to write applets. 

Besides, the strengths
of erlang are not necessarily the sort of applications
that runs in a browser.

As for java standalones, it better to run our own emulator.

There was a UK based company (called Persimon) that did ML for the JVM, 
however they just recently gave up on that. If it was due to technical
reasons or business reasons, we don't know.

 > What are the issues
 > involved with such a task.
 > 

Write an erlang compiler that emits JVM byte codes, 
Solve the problem with tail calls in JVM (hard)
Interface all the java libs out there.

/klacke