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Guide to GNU gcj

This manual describes how to use gcj, the GNU compiler for the Java programming language. gcj can generate both `.class' files and object files, and it can read both Java source code and `.class' files.

GNU GENERAL PUBLIC LICENSE  The GNU General Public License
GNU Free Documentation License  How you can share and copy this manual
1. Invoking gcj  Compiler options supported by gcj
2. Compatibility with the Java Platform  Compatibility between gcj and other tools for Java
3. Invoking gcjh  Generate header files from class files
4. Invoking jv-scan  Print information about source files
5. Invoking jcf-dump  Print information about class files
6. Invoking gij  Interpreting Java bytecodes
7. Resources  Where to look for more information


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GNU GENERAL PUBLIC LICENSE

Version 2, June 1991

 
Copyright (C) 1989, 1991 Free Software Foundation, Inc.
59 Temple Place - Suite 330, Boston, MA 02111-1307, USA

Everyone is permitted to copy and distribute verbatim copies
of this license document, but changing it is not allowed.


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Preamble

The licenses for most software are designed to take away your freedom to share and change it. By contrast, the GNU General Public License is intended to guarantee your freedom to share and change free software--to make sure the software is free for all its users. This General Public License applies to most of the Free Software Foundation's software and to any other program whose authors commit to using it. (Some other Free Software Foundation software is covered by the GNU Library General Public License instead.) You can apply it to your programs, too.

When we speak of free software, we are referring to freedom, not price. Our General Public Licenses are designed to make sure that you have the freedom to distribute copies of free software (and charge for this service if you wish), that you receive source code or can get it if you want it, that you can change the software or use pieces of it in new free programs; and that you know you can do these things.

To protect your rights, we need to make restrictions that forbid anyone to deny you these rights or to ask you to surrender the rights. These restrictions translate to certain responsibilities for you if you distribute copies of the software, or if you modify it.

For example, if you distribute copies of such a program, whether gratis or for a fee, you must give the recipients all the rights that you have. You must make sure that they, too, receive or can get the source code. And you must show them these terms so they know their rights.

We protect your rights with two steps: (1) copyright the software, and (2) offer you this license which gives you legal permission to copy, distribute and/or modify the software.

Also, for each author's protection and ours, we want to make certain that everyone understands that there is no warranty for this free software. If the software is modified by someone else and passed on, we want its recipients to know that what they have is not the original, so that any problems introduced by others will not reflect on the original authors' reputations.

Finally, any free program is threatened constantly by software patents. We wish to avoid the danger that redistributors of a free program will individually obtain patent licenses, in effect making the program proprietary. To prevent this, we have made it clear that any patent must be licensed for everyone's free use or not licensed at all.

The precise terms and conditions for copying, distribution and modification follow.

TERMS AND CONDITIONS FOR COPYING, DISTRIBUTION AND MODIFICATION

  1. This License applies to any program or other work which contains a notice placed by the copyright holder saying it may be distributed under the terms of this General Public License. The "Program", below, refers to any such program or work, and a "work based on the Program" means either the Program or any derivative work under copyright law: that is to say, a work containing the Program or a portion of it, either verbatim or with modifications and/or translated into another language. (Hereinafter, translation is included without limitation in the term "modification".) Each licensee is addressed as "you".

    Activities other than copying, distribution and modification are not covered by this License; they are outside its scope. The act of running the Program is not restricted, and the output from the Program is covered only if its contents constitute a work based on the Program (independent of having been made by running the Program). Whether that is true depends on what the Program does.

  2. You may copy and distribute verbatim copies of the Program's source code as you receive it, in any medium, provided that you conspicuously and appropriately publish on each copy an appropriate copyright notice and disclaimer of warranty; keep intact all the notices that refer to this License and to the absence of any warranty; and give any other recipients of the Program a copy of this License along with the Program.

    You may charge a fee for the physical act of transferring a copy, and you may at your option offer warranty protection in exchange for a fee.

  3. You may modify your copy or copies of the Program or any portion of it, thus forming a work based on the Program, and copy and distribute such modifications or work under the terms of Section 1 above, provided that you also meet all of these conditions:

    1. You must cause the modified files to carry prominent notices stating that you changed the files and the date of any change.

    2. You must cause any work that you distribute or publish, that in whole or in part contains or is derived from the Program or any part thereof, to be licensed as a whole at no charge to all third parties under the terms of this License.

    3. If the modified program normally reads commands interactively when run, you must cause it, when started running for such interactive use in the most ordinary way, to print or display an announcement including an appropriate copyright notice and a notice that there is no warranty (or else, saying that you provide a warranty) and that users may redistribute the program under these conditions, and telling the user how to view a copy of this License. (Exception: if the Program itself is interactive but does not normally print such an announcement, your work based on the Program is not required to print an announcement.)

    These requirements apply to the modified work as a whole. If identifiable sections of that work are not derived from the Program, and can be reasonably considered independent and separate works in themselves, then this License, and its terms, do not apply to those sections when you distribute them as separate works. But when you distribute the same sections as part of a whole which is a work based on the Program, the distribution of the whole must be on the terms of this License, whose permissions for other licensees extend to the entire whole, and thus to each and every part regardless of who wrote it.

    Thus, it is not the intent of this section to claim rights or contest your rights to work written entirely by you; rather, the intent is to exercise the right to control the distribution of derivative or collective works based on the Program.

    In addition, mere aggregation of another work not based on the Program with the Program (or with a work based on the Program) on a volume of a storage or distribution medium does not bring the other work under the scope of this License.

  4. You may copy and distribute the Program (or a work based on it, under Section 2) in object code or executable form under the terms of Sections 1 and 2 above provided that you also do one of the following:

    1. Accompany it with the complete corresponding machine-readable source code, which must be distributed under the terms of Sections 1 and 2 above on a medium customarily used for software interchange; or,

    2. Accompany it with a written offer, valid for at least three years, to give any third party, for a charge no more than your cost of physically performing source distribution, a complete machine-readable copy of the corresponding source code, to be distributed under the terms of Sections 1 and 2 above on a medium customarily used for software interchange; or,

    3. Accompany it with the information you received as to the offer to distribute corresponding source code. (This alternative is allowed only for noncommercial distribution and only if you received the program in object code or executable form with such an offer, in accord with Subsection b above.)

    The source code for a work means the preferred form of the work for making modifications to it. For an executable work, complete source code means all the source code for all modules it contains, plus any associated interface definition files, plus the scripts used to control compilation and installation of the executable. However, as a special exception, the source code distributed need not include anything that is normally distributed (in either source or binary form) with the major components (compiler, kernel, and so on) of the operating system on which the executable runs, unless that component itself accompanies the executable.

    If distribution of executable or object code is made by offering access to copy from a designated place, then offering equivalent access to copy the source code from the same place counts as distribution of the source code, even though third parties are not compelled to copy the source along with the object code.

  5. You may not copy, modify, sublicense, or distribute the Program except as expressly provided under this License. Any attempt otherwise to copy, modify, sublicense or distribute the Program is void, and will automatically terminate your rights under this License. However, parties who have received copies, or rights, from you under this License will not have their licenses terminated so long as such parties remain in full compliance.

  6. You are not required to accept this License, since you have not signed it. However, nothing else grants you permission to modify or distribute the Program or its derivative works. These actions are prohibited by law if you do not accept this License. Therefore, by modifying or distributing the Program (or any work based on the Program), you indicate your acceptance of this License to do so, and all its terms and conditions for copying, distributing or modifying the Program or works based on it.

  7. Each time you redistribute the Program (or any work based on the Program), the recipient automatically receives a license from the original licensor to copy, distribute or modify the Program subject to these terms and conditions. You may not impose any further restrictions on the recipients' exercise of the rights granted herein. You are not responsible for enforcing compliance by third parties to this License.

  8. If, as a consequence of a court judgment or allegation of patent infringement or for any other reason (not limited to patent issues), conditions are imposed on you (whether by court order, agreement or otherwise) that contradict the conditions of this License, they do not excuse you from the conditions of this License. If you cannot distribute so as to satisfy simultaneously your obligations under this License and any other pertinent obligations, then as a consequence you may not distribute the Program at all. For example, if a patent license would not permit royalty-free redistribution of the Program by all those who receive copies directly or indirectly through you, then the only way you could satisfy both it and this License would be to refrain entirely from distribution of the Program.

    If any portion of this section is held invalid or unenforceable under any particular circumstance, the balance of the section is intended to apply and the section as a whole is intended to apply in other circumstances.

    It is not the purpose of this section to induce you to infringe any patents or other property right claims or to contest validity of any such claims; this section has the sole purpose of protecting the integrity of the free software distribution system, which is implemented by public license practices. Many people have made generous contributions to the wide range of software distributed through that system in reliance on consistent application of that system; it is up to the author/donor to decide if he or she is willing to distribute software through any other system and a licensee cannot impose that choice.

    This section is intended to make thoroughly clear what is believed to be a consequence of the rest of this License.

  9. If the distribution and/or use of the Program is restricted in certain countries either by patents or by copyrighted interfaces, the original copyright holder who places the Program under this License may add an explicit geographical distribution limitation excluding those countries, so that distribution is permitted only in or among countries not thus excluded. In such case, this License incorporates the limitation as if written in the body of this License.

  10. The Free Software Foundation may publish revised and/or new versions of the General Public License from time to time. Such new versions will be similar in spirit to the present version, but may differ in detail to address new problems or concerns.

    Each version is given a distinguishing version number. If the Program specifies a version number of this License which applies to it and "any later version", you have the option of following the terms and conditions either of that version or of any later version published by the Free Software Foundation. If the Program does not specify a version number of this License, you may choose any version ever published by the Free Software Foundation.

  11. If you wish to incorporate parts of the Program into other free programs whose distribution conditions are different, write to the author to ask for permission. For software which is copyrighted by the Free Software Foundation, write to the Free Software Foundation; we sometimes make exceptions for this. Our decision will be guided by the two goals of preserving the free status of all derivatives of our free software and of promoting the sharing and reuse of software generally.

    NO WARRANTY

  12. BECAUSE THE PROGRAM IS LICENSED FREE OF CHARGE, THERE IS NO WARRANTY FOR THE PROGRAM, TO THE EXTENT PERMITTED BY APPLICABLE LAW. EXCEPT WHEN OTHERWISE STATED IN WRITING THE COPYRIGHT HOLDERS AND/OR OTHER PARTIES PROVIDE THE PROGRAM "AS IS" WITHOUT WARRANTY OF ANY KIND, EITHER EXPRESSED OR IMPLIED, INCLUDING, BUT NOT LIMITED TO, THE IMPLIED WARRANTIES OF MERCHANTABILITY AND FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE. THE ENTIRE RISK AS TO THE QUALITY AND PERFORMANCE OF THE PROGRAM IS WITH YOU. SHOULD THE PROGRAM PROVE DEFECTIVE, YOU ASSUME THE COST OF ALL NECESSARY SERVICING, REPAIR OR CORRECTION.

  13. IN NO EVENT UNLESS REQUIRED BY APPLICABLE LAW OR AGREED TO IN WRITING WILL ANY COPYRIGHT HOLDER, OR ANY OTHER PARTY WHO MAY MODIFY AND/OR REDISTRIBUTE THE PROGRAM AS PERMITTED ABOVE, BE LIABLE TO YOU FOR DAMAGES, INCLUDING ANY GENERAL, SPECIAL, INCIDENTAL OR CONSEQUENTIAL DAMAGES ARISING OUT OF THE USE OR INABILITY TO USE THE PROGRAM (INCLUDING BUT NOT LIMITED TO LOSS OF DATA OR DATA BEING RENDERED INACCURATE OR LOSSES SUSTAINED BY YOU OR THIRD PARTIES OR A FAILURE OF THE PROGRAM TO OPERATE WITH ANY OTHER PROGRAMS), EVEN IF SUCH HOLDER OR OTHER PARTY HAS BEEN ADVISED OF THE POSSIBILITY OF SUCH DAMAGES.

END OF TERMS AND CONDITIONS


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How to Apply These Terms to Your New Programs

If you develop a new program, and you want it to be of the greatest possible use to the public, the best way to achieve this is to make it free software which everyone can redistribute and change under these terms.

To do so, attach the following notices to the program. It is safest to attach them to the start of each source file to most effectively convey the exclusion of warranty; and each file should have at least the "copyright" line and a pointer to where the full notice is found.

 
one line to give the program's name and a brief idea of what it does.
Copyright (C) year  name of author

This program is free software; you can redistribute it and/or modify
it under the terms of the GNU General Public License as published by
the Free Software Foundation; either version 2 of the License, or
(at your option) any later version.

This program is distributed in the hope that it will be useful,
but WITHOUT ANY WARRANTY; without even the implied warranty of
MERCHANTABILITY or FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE.  See the
GNU General Public License for more details.

You should have received a copy of the GNU General Public License
along with this program; if not, write to the Free Software
Foundation, Inc., 59 Temple Place - Suite 330,
Boston, MA 02111-1307, USA.

Also add information on how to contact you by electronic and paper mail.

If the program is interactive, make it output a short notice like this when it starts in an interactive mode:

 
Gnomovision version 69, Copyright (C) year name of author
Gnomovision comes with ABSOLUTELY NO WARRANTY; for details
type `show w'.
This is free software, and you are welcome to redistribute it
under certain conditions; type `show c' for details.

The hypothetical commands `show w' and `show c' should show the appropriate parts of the General Public License. Of course, the commands you use may be called something other than `show w' and `show c'; they could even be mouse-clicks or menu items--whatever suits your program.

You should also get your employer (if you work as a programmer) or your school, if any, to sign a "copyright disclaimer" for the program, if necessary. Here is a sample; alter the names:

 
Yoyodyne, Inc., hereby disclaims all copyright interest in the program
`Gnomovision' (which makes passes at compilers) written by James Hacker.

signature of Ty Coon, 1 April 1989
Ty Coon, President of Vice

This General Public License does not permit incorporating your program into proprietary programs. If your program is a subroutine library, you may consider it more useful to permit linking proprietary applications with the library. If this is what you want to do, use the GNU Library General Public License instead of this License.


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GNU Free Documentation License

Version 1.1, March 2000

 
Copyright (C) 2000 Free Software Foundation, Inc.
59 Temple Place, Suite 330, Boston, MA  02111-1307, USA

Everyone is permitted to copy and distribute verbatim copies
of this license document, but changing it is not allowed.

  1. PREAMBLE

    The purpose of this License is to make a manual, textbook, or other written document free in the sense of freedom: to assure everyone the effective freedom to copy and redistribute it, with or without modifying it, either commercially or noncommercially. Secondarily, this License preserves for the author and publisher a way to get credit for their work, while not being considered responsible for modifications made by others.

    This License is a kind of "copyleft", which means that derivative works of the document must themselves be free in the same sense. It complements the GNU General Public License, which is a copyleft license designed for free software.

    We have designed this License in order to use it for manuals for free software, because free software needs free documentation: a free program should come with manuals providing the same freedoms that the software does. But this License is not limited to software manuals; it can be used for any textual work, regardless of subject matter or whether it is published as a printed book. We recommend this License principally for works whose purpose is instruction or reference.

  2. APPLICABILITY AND DEFINITIONS

    This License applies to any manual or other work that contains a notice placed by the copyright holder saying it can be distributed under the terms of this License. The "Document", below, refers to any such manual or work. Any member of the public is a licensee, and is addressed as "you".

    A "Modified Version" of the Document means any work containing the Document or a portion of it, either copied verbatim, or with modifications and/or translated into another language.

    A "Secondary Section" is a named appendix or a front-matter section of the Document that deals exclusively with the relationship of the publishers or authors of the Document to the Document's overall subject (or to related matters) and contains nothing that could fall directly within that overall subject. (For example, if the Document is in part a textbook of mathematics, a Secondary Section may not explain any mathematics.) The relationship could be a matter of historical connection with the subject or with related matters, or of legal, commercial, philosophical, ethical or political position regarding them.

    The "Invariant Sections" are certain Secondary Sections whose titles are designated, as being those of Invariant Sections, in the notice that says that the Document is released under this License.

    The "Cover Texts" are certain short passages of text that are listed, as Front-Cover Texts or Back-Cover Texts, in the notice that says that the Document is released under this License.

    A "Transparent" copy of the Document means a machine-readable copy, represented in a format whose specification is available to the general public, whose contents can be viewed and edited directly and straightforwardly with generic text editors or (for images composed of pixels) generic paint programs or (for drawings) some widely available drawing editor, and that is suitable for input to text formatters or for automatic translation to a variety of formats suitable for input to text formatters. A copy made in an otherwise Transparent file format whose markup has been designed to thwart or discourage subsequent modification by readers is not Transparent. A copy that is not "Transparent" is called "Opaque".

    Examples of suitable formats for Transparent copies include plain ASCII without markup, Texinfo input format, LaTeX input format, SGML or XML using a publicly available DTD, and standard-conforming simple HTML designed for human modification. Opaque formats include PostScript, PDF, proprietary formats that can be read and edited only by proprietary word processors, SGML or XML for which the DTD and/or processing tools are not generally available, and the machine-generated HTML produced by some word processors for output purposes only.

    The "Title Page" means, for a printed book, the title page itself, plus such following pages as are needed to hold, legibly, the material this License requires to appear in the title page. For works in formats which do not have any title page as such, "Title Page" means the text near the most prominent appearance of the work's title, preceding the beginning of the body of the text.

  3. VERBATIM COPYING

    You may copy and distribute the Document in any medium, either commercially or noncommercially, provided that this License, the copyright notices, and the license notice saying this License applies to the Document are reproduced in all copies, and that you add no other conditions whatsoever to those of this License. You may not use technical measures to obstruct or control the reading or further copying of the copies you make or distribute. However, you may accept compensation in exchange for copies. If you distribute a large enough number of copies you must also follow the conditions in section 3.

    You may also lend copies, under the same conditions stated above, and you may publicly display copies.

  4. COPYING IN QUANTITY

    If you publish printed copies of the Document numbering more than 100, and the Document's license notice requires Cover Texts, you must enclose the copies in covers that carry, clearly and legibly, all these Cover Texts: Front-Cover Texts on the front cover, and Back-Cover Texts on the back cover. Both covers must also clearly and legibly identify you as the publisher of these copies. The front cover must present the full title with all words of the title equally prominent and visible. You may add other material on the covers in addition. Copying with changes limited to the covers, as long as they preserve the title of the Document and satisfy these conditions, can be treated as verbatim copying in other respects.

    If the required texts for either cover are too voluminous to fit legibly, you should put the first ones listed (as many as fit reasonably) on the actual cover, and continue the rest onto adjacent pages.

    If you publish or distribute Opaque copies of the Document numbering more than 100, you must either include a machine-readable Transparent copy along with each Opaque copy, or state in or with each Opaque copy a publicly-accessible computer-network location containing a complete Transparent copy of the Document, free of added material, which the general network-using public has access to download anonymously at no charge using public-standard network protocols. If you use the latter option, you must take reasonably prudent steps, when you begin distribution of Opaque copies in quantity, to ensure that this Transparent copy will remain thus accessible at the stated location until at least one year after the last time you distribute an Opaque copy (directly or through your agents or retailers) of that edition to the public.

    It is requested, but not required, that you contact the authors of the Document well before redistributing any large number of copies, to give them a chance to provide you with an updated version of the Document.

  5. MODIFICATIONS

    You may copy and distribute a Modified Version of the Document under the conditions of sections 2 and 3 above, provided that you release the Modified Version under precisely this License, with the Modified Version filling the role of the Document, thus licensing distribution and modification of the Modified Version to whoever possesses a copy of it. In addition, you must do these things in the Modified Version:

    1. Use in the Title Page (and on the covers, if any) a title distinct from that of the Document, and from those of previous versions (which should, if there were any, be listed in the History section of the Document). You may use the same title as a previous version if the original publisher of that version gives permission.

    2. List on the Title Page, as authors, one or more persons or entities responsible for authorship of the modifications in the Modified Version, together with at least five of the principal authors of the Document (all of its principal authors, if it has less than five).

    3. State on the Title page the name of the publisher of the Modified Version, as the publisher.

    4. Preserve all the copyright notices of the Document.

    5. Add an appropriate copyright notice for your modifications adjacent to the other copyright notices.

    6. Include, immediately after the copyright notices, a license notice giving the public permission to use the Modified Version under the terms of this License, in the form shown in the Addendum below.

    7. Preserve in that license notice the full lists of Invariant Sections and required Cover Texts given in the Document's license notice.

    8. Include an unaltered copy of this License.

    9. Preserve the section entitled "History", and its title, and add to it an item stating at least the title, year, new authors, and publisher of the Modified Version as given on the Title Page. If there is no section entitled "History" in the Document, create one stating the title, year, authors, and publisher of the Document as given on its Title Page, then add an item describing the Modified Version as stated in the previous sentence.

    10. Preserve the network location, if any, given in the Document for public access to a Transparent copy of the Document, and likewise the network locations given in the Document for previous versions it was based on. These may be placed in the "History" section. You may omit a network location for a work that was published at least four years before the Document itself, or if the original publisher of the version it refers to gives permission.

    11. In any section entitled "Acknowledgments" or "Dedications", preserve the section's title, and preserve in the section all the substance and tone of each of the contributor acknowledgments and/or dedications given therein.

    12. Preserve all the Invariant Sections of the Document, unaltered in their text and in their titles. Section numbers or the equivalent are not considered part of the section titles.

    13. Delete any section entitled "Endorsements". Such a section may not be included in the Modified Version.

    14. Do not retitle any existing section as "Endorsements" or to conflict in title with any Invariant Section.

    If the Modified Version includes new front-matter sections or appendices that qualify as Secondary Sections and contain no material copied from the Document, you may at your option designate some or all of these sections as invariant. To do this, add their titles to the list of Invariant Sections in the Modified Version's license notice. These titles must be distinct from any other section titles.

    You may add a section entitled "Endorsements", provided it contains nothing but endorsements of your Modified Version by various parties--for example, statements of peer review or that the text has been approved by an organization as the authoritative definition of a standard.

    You may add a passage of up to five words as a Front-Cover Text, and a passage of up to 25 words as a Back-Cover Text, to the end of the list of Cover Texts in the Modified Version. Only one passage of Front-Cover Text and one of Back-Cover Text may be added by (or through arrangements made by) any one entity. If the Document already includes a cover text for the same cover, previously added by you or by arrangement made by the same entity you are acting on behalf of, you may not add another; but you may replace the old one, on explicit permission from the previous publisher that added the old one.

    The author(s) and publisher(s) of the Document do not by this License give permission to use their names for publicity for or to assert or imply endorsement of any Modified Version.

  6. COMBINING DOCUMENTS

    You may combine the Document with other documents released under this License, under the terms defined in section 4 above for modified versions, provided that you include in the combination all of the Invariant Sections of all of the original documents, unmodified, and list them all as Invariant Sections of your combined work in its license notice.

    The combined work need only contain one copy of this License, and multiple identical Invariant Sections may be replaced with a single copy. If there are multiple Invariant Sections with the same name but different contents, make the title of each such section unique by adding at the end of it, in parentheses, the name of the original author or publisher of that section if known, or else a unique number. Make the same adjustment to the section titles in the list of Invariant Sections in the license notice of the combined work.

    In the combination, you must combine any sections entitled "History" in the various original documents, forming one section entitled "History"; likewise combine any sections entitled "Acknowledgments", and any sections entitled "Dedications". You must delete all sections entitled "Endorsements."

  7. COLLECTIONS OF DOCUMENTS

    You may make a collection consisting of the Document and other documents released under this License, and replace the individual copies of this License in the various documents with a single copy that is included in the collection, provided that you follow the rules of this License for verbatim copying of each of the documents in all other respects.

    You may extract a single document from such a collection, and distribute it individually under this License, provided you insert a copy of this License into the extracted document, and follow this License in all other respects regarding verbatim copying of that document.

  8. AGGREGATION WITH INDEPENDENT WORKS

    A compilation of the Document or its derivatives with other separate and independent documents or works, in or on a volume of a storage or distribution medium, does not as a whole count as a Modified Version of the Document, provided no compilation copyright is claimed for the compilation. Such a compilation is called an "aggregate", and this License does not apply to the other self-contained works thus compiled with the Document, on account of their being thus compiled, if they are not themselves derivative works of the Document.

    If the Cover Text requirement of section 3 is applicable to these copies of the Document, then if the Document is less than one quarter of the entire aggregate, the Document's Cover Texts may be placed on covers that surround only the Document within the aggregate. Otherwise they must appear on covers around the whole aggregate.

  9. TRANSLATION

    Translation is considered a kind of modification, so you may distribute translations of the Document under the terms of section 4. Replacing Invariant Sections with translations requires special permission from their copyright holders, but you may include translations of some or all Invariant Sections in addition to the original versions of these Invariant Sections. You may include a translation of this License provided that you also include the original English version of this License. In case of a disagreement between the translation and the original English version of this License, the original English version will prevail.

  10. TERMINATION

    You may not copy, modify, sublicense, or distribute the Document except as expressly provided for under this License. Any other attempt to copy, modify, sublicense or distribute the Document is void, and will automatically terminate your rights under this License. However, parties who have received copies, or rights, from you under this License will not have their licenses terminated so long as such parties remain in full compliance.

  11. FUTURE REVISIONS OF THIS LICENSE

    The Free Software Foundation may publish new, revised versions of the GNU Free Documentation License from time to time. Such new versions will be similar in spirit to the present version, but may differ in detail to address new problems or concerns. See http://www.gnu.org/copyleft/.

    Each version of the License is given a distinguishing version number. If the Document specifies that a particular numbered version of this License "or any later version" applies to it, you have the option of following the terms and conditions either of that specified version or of any later version that has been published (not as a draft) by the Free Software Foundation. If the Document does not specify a version number of this License, you may choose any version ever published (not as a draft) by the Free Software Foundation.


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ADDENDUM: How to use this License for your documents

To use this License in a document you have written, include a copy of the License in the document and put the following copyright and license notices just after the title page:

 
  Copyright (C)  year  your name.
  Permission is granted to copy, distribute and/or modify this document
  under the terms of the GNU Free Documentation License, Version 1.1
  or any later version published by the Free Software Foundation;
  with the Invariant Sections being list their titles, with the
  Front-Cover Texts being list, and with the Back-Cover Texts being list.
  A copy of the license is included in the section entitled ``GNU
  Free Documentation License''.

If you have no Invariant Sections, write "with no Invariant Sections" instead of saying which ones are invariant. If you have no Front-Cover Texts, write "no Front-Cover Texts" instead of "Front-Cover Texts being list"; likewise for Back-Cover Texts.

If your document contains nontrivial examples of program code, we recommend releasing these examples in parallel under your choice of free software license, such as the GNU General Public License, to permit their use in free software.


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1. Invoking gcj

As gcj is just another front end to gcc, it supports many of the same options as gcc. See section `Option Summary' in Using the GNU Compiler Collection. This manual only documents the options specific to gcj.

1.1 Input and output files  
1.2 Input Options  How gcj finds files
1.3 Encodings  Options controlling source file encoding
1.4 Warnings  Options controlling warnings specific to gcj
1.5 Code Generation  Options controlling the output of gcj
1.6 Configure-time Options  Options you won't use


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1.1 Input and output files

A gcj command is like a gcc command, in that it consists of a number of options and file names. The following kinds of input file names are supported:

file.java
Java source files.
file.class
Java bytecode files.
file.zip
file.jar
An archive containing one or more .class files, all of which are compiled. The archive may be compressed.
@file
A file containing a whitespace-separated list of input file names. (Currently, these must all be .java source files, but that may change.) Each named file is compiled, just as if it had been on the command line.
library.a
library.so
-llibname
Libraries to use when linking. See the gcc manual.

You can specify more than one input file on the gcj command line, in which case they will all be compiled. If you specify a -o FILENAME option, all the input files will be compiled together, producing a single output file, named FILENAME. This is allowed even when using -S or -c, but not when using -C. (This is an extension beyond the what plain gcc allows.) (If more than one input file is specified, all must currently be .java files, though we hope to fix this.)


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1.2 Input Options

gcj has options to control where it looks to find files it needs. For instance, gcj might need to load a class that is referenced by the file it has been asked to compile. Like other compilers for the Java language, gcj has a notion of a class path. There are several options and environment variables which can be used to manipulate the class path. When gcj looks for a given class, it searches the class path looking for matching `.class' or `.java' file. gcj comes with a built-in class path which points at the installed `libgcj.jar', a file which contains all the standard classes.

In the below, a directory or path component can refer either to an actual directory on the filesystem, or to a `.zip' or `.jar' file, which gcj will search as if it is a directory.

-Idir
All directories specified by -I are kept in order and prepended to the class path constructed from all the other options. Unless compatibility with tools like javac is imported, we recommend always using -I instead of the other options for manipulating the class path.

--classpath=path
This sets the class path to path, a colon-separated list of paths (on Windows-based systems, a semicolon-separate list of paths).

--CLASSPATH=path
This sets the class path to path, a colon-separated list of paths (on Windows-based systems, a semicolon-separate list of paths). This differs from the --classpath option in that it also suppresses the built-in system path.

CLASSPATH
This is an environment variable which holds a list of paths.

The final class path is constructed like so:

The classfile built by gcj for the class java.lang.Object (and placed in libgcj.jar) contains a special zero length attribute gnu.gcj.gcj-compiled. The compiler looks for this attribute when loading java.lang.Object and will report an error if it isn't found, unless it compiles to bytecode (the option -fforce-classes-archive-check can be used to overide this behavior in this particular case.)

-fforce-classes-archive-check
This forces the compiler to always check for the special zero length attribute gnu.gcj.gcj-compiled in java.lang.Object and issue an error if it isn't found.


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1.3 Encodings

The Java programming language uses Unicode throughout. In an effort to integrate well with other locales, gcj allows `.java' files to be written using almost any encoding. gcj knows how to convert these encodings into its internal encoding at compile time.

You can use the --encoding=NAME option to specify an encoding (of a particular character set) to use for source files. If this is not specified, the default encoding comes from your current locale. If your host system has insufficient locale support, then gcj assumes the default encoding to be the `UTF-8' encoding of Unicode.

To implement --encoding, gcj simply uses the host platform's iconv conversion routine. This means that in practice gcj is limited by the capabilities of the host platform.

The names allowed for the argument --encoding vary from platform to platform (since they are not standardized anywhere). However, gcj implements the encoding named `UTF-8' internally, so if you choose to use this for your source files you can be assured that it will work on every host.


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1.4 Warnings

gcj implements several warnings. As with other generic gcc warnings, if an option of the form -Wfoo enables a warning, then -Wno-foo will disable it. Here we've chosen to document the form of the warning which will have an effect -- the default being the opposite of what is listed.

-Wredundant-modifiers
With this flag, gcj will warn about redundant modifiers. For instance, it will warn if an interface method is declared public.

-Wextraneous-semicolon
This causes gcj to warn about empty statements. Empty statements have been deprecated.

-Wno-out-of-date
This option will cause gcj not to warn when a source file is newer than its matching class file. By default gcj will warn about this.

-Wunused
This is the same as gcc's -Wunused.

-Wall
This is the same as -Wredundant-modifiers -Wextraneous-semicolon -Wunused.


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1.5 Code Generation

In addition to the many gcc options controlling code generation, gcj has several options specific to itself.

--main=CLASSNAME
This option is used when linking to specify the name of the class whose main method should be invoked when the resulting executable is run. (1)

-Dname[=value]
This option can only be used with --main. It defines a system property named name with value value. If value is not specified then it defaults to the empty string. These system properties are initialized at the program's startup and can be retrieved at runtime using the java.lang.System.getProperty method.

-C
This option is used to tell gcj to generate bytecode (`.class' files) rather than object code.

-d directory
When used with -C, this causes all generated `.class' files to be put in the appropriate subdirectory of directory. By default they will be put in subdirectories of the current working directory.

-fno-bounds-check
By default, gcj generates code which checks the bounds of all array indexing operations. With this option, these checks are omitted. Note that this can result in unpredictable behavior if the code in question actually does violate array bounds constraints.

-fjni
With gcj there are two options for writing native methods: CNI and JNI. By default gcj assumes you are using CNI. If you are compiling a class with native methods, and these methods are implemented using JNI, then you must use -fjni. This option causes gcj to generate stubs which will invoke the underlying JNI methods.


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1.6 Configure-time Options

Some gcj code generations options affect the resulting ABI, and so can only be meaningfully given when libgcj, the runtime package, is configured. libgcj puts the appropriate options from this group into a `spec' file which is read by gcj. These options are listed here for completeness; if you are using libgcj then you won't want to touch these options.

-fuse-boehm-gc
This enables the use of the Boehm GC bitmap marking code. In particular this causes gcj to put an object marking descriptor into each vtable.

-fhash-synchronization
By default, synchronization data (the data used for synchronize, wait, and notify) is pointed to by a word in each object. With this option gcj assumes that this information is stored in a hash table and not in the object itself.

-fuse-divide-subroutine
On some systems, a library routine is called to perform integer division. This is required to get exception handling correct when dividing by zero.


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2. Compatibility with the Java Platform

As we believe it is important that the Java platform not be fragmented, gcj and libgcj try to conform to the relevant Java specifications. However, limited manpower and incomplete and unclear documentation work against us. So, there are caveats to using gcj.

This list of compatibility issues is by no means complete.


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3. Invoking gcjh

The gcjh program is used to generate header files from class files. It can generate both CNI and JNI header files, as well as stub implementation files which can be used as a basis for implementing the required native methods.

-stubs
This causes gcjh to generate stub files instead of header files. By default the stub file will be named after the class, with a suffix of `.cc'. In JNI mode, the default output file will have the suffix `.c'.

-jni
This tells gcjh to generate a JNI header or stub. By default, CNI headers are generated.

-add text
Inserts text into the class body. This is ignored in JNI mode.

-append text
Inserts text into the header file after the class declaration. This is ignored in JNI mode.

-friend text
Inserts text into the class as a friend declaration. This is ignored in JNI mode.

-prepend text
Inserts text into the header file before the class declaration. This is ignored in JNI mode.

--classpath=path
--CLASSPATH=path
-Idirectory
-d directory
-o file
These options are all identical to the corresponding gcj options.

-o file
Sets the output file name. This cannot be used if there is more than one class on the command line.

-td directory
Sets the name of the directory to use for temporary files.

--help
Print help about gcjh and exit. No further processing is done.

--version
Print version information for gcjh and exit. No further processing is done.

All remaining options are considered to be names of classes.


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4. Invoking jv-scan

The jv-scan program can be used to print information about a Java source file (`.java' file).

--complexity
This prints a complexity measure, related to cyclomatic complexity, for each input file.

--encoding=name
This works like the corresponding gcj option.

--print-main
This prints the name of the class in this file containing a main method.

--list-class
This lists the names of all classes defined in the input files.

--list-filename
If --list-class is given, this option causes jv-scan to also print the name of the file in which each class was found.

-o file
Print output to the named file.


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5. Invoking jcf-dump

This is a class file examiner, similar to javap. It will print information about a number of classes, which are specifed by class name or file name.

-c
Disassemble method bodies. By default method bodies are not printed.

--javap
Generate output in javap format. The implementation of this feature is very incomplete.

--classpath=path
--CLASSPATH=path
-Idirectory
-o file
These options as the same as the corresponding gcj options.


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6. Invoking gij

gij is a Java bytecode interpreter included with libgcj. gij is not available on every platform; porting it requires a small amount of assembly programming which has not been done for all the targets supported by gcj.

The primary argument to gij is the name of a class or, with -jar, a jar file. Options before this argument are interpreted by gij; remaining options are passed to the interpreted program.

If a class name is specified and this class does not have a main method with the appropriate signature (a static void method with a String[] as its sole argument), then gij will print an error and exit.

If a jar file is specified then gij will use information in it to determine which class' main method will be invoked.

gij will invoke the main method with all the remaining command-line options.

Note that gij is not limited to interpreting code. Because libgcj includes a class loader which can dynamically load shared objects, it is possible to give gij the name of a class which has been compiled and put into a shared library on the class path.

-Dname[=value]
This defines a system property named name with value value. If value is not specified then it defaults to the empty string. These system properties are initialized at the program's startup and can be retrieved at runtime using the java.lang.System.getProperty method.

-ms=number
This sets the initial heap size

-mx=number
This sets the maximum heap size.

-jar
This indicates that the name passed to gij should be interpreted as the name of a jar file, not a class.


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7. Resources

While writing gcj and libgcj we have, of course, relied heavily on documentation from Sun Microsystems. In particular we have used The Java Language Specification (both first and second editions), the Java Class Libraries (volumes one and two), and the Java Virtual Machine Specification. In addition we've used the online documentation at http://java.sun.com/.

The current gcj home page is http://gcc.gnu.org/java/.

For more information on gcc, see http://gcc.gnu.org/.

Some libgcj testing is done using the Mauve test suite. This is a free software Java class library test suite which is being written because the JCK is not free. See http://sources.redhat.com/mauve/ for more information.


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Footnotes

(1)

The linker by default looks for a global function named main. Since Java does not have global functions, and a collection of Java classes may have more than one class with a main method, you need to let the linker know which of those main methods it should invoke when starting the application.


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Table of Contents


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Short Table of Contents

GNU GENERAL PUBLIC LICENSE
GNU Free Documentation License
1. Invoking gcj
2. Compatibility with the Java Platform
3. Invoking gcjh
4. Invoking jv-scan
5. Invoking jcf-dump
6. Invoking gij
7. Resources

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