A Developer Hopes To Restore GCC's Java Front-End

Following GCC Rust being merged and the Modula-2 front-end, a developer hopes to restore the GNU Compiler Collection (GCC) Java front-end, GCJ.

Back in 2016, the GCC compiler dropped the Java/GCJ support over being unmaintained. The GCC Java support was removed over lack of maintenance and not seeing much attention given that there have been numerous free software Java implementations.

Independent developer Max Downey Twiss is hoping to see GCJ restored and has been working on reviving that front-end with various fixes. Given that there are other Java bytecode compilers out there and a free Java runtime library, he hopes to focus on GCJ being a free machine code compiler for Java. He hopes to replace Classpath with OpenJDK and focus on GCJ for targeting machine code.

But before getting too excited, the current patch series he has been working on fail to link and thus not usable in current form. So far it also appears to be just a sole developer effort trying to get GCJ into order while he hopes to take care of its maintenance and at least maintain similar level of functionality to the previously removed Java front-end.

Those interested can find the current GCC Java front-end discussion via gcc-patches.