I've released IKVM.NET 7.2 to SourceForge and NuGet. The binaries are identical to the ones in release candidate 5.

Release Notes

This document lists the improvements, known issues and incompatibilities.

What's New (relative to IKVM.NET 7.1):

• Integrated OpenJDK 7 u6 b24.
• Improved java.util.concurrent performance.
• Removed org.omg.PortableInterceptor.UNKNOWN class, that is not part of [Open]JDK rt.jar.
• Added ZipFile constructor that was added in Java 7.
• Add support for running with headless awt toolkit.
• Changed ikvmc to apply custom attribute annotations on annotation types to the corresponding custom attribute that is generated (and allow AttributeUsageAttribute to override the default AttributeUsageAttribute generated from the @Target annotation).
• Added app.config files for executables to allow them to run on .NET 4.5 on Windows 8 without triggering the .NET 3.5 auto download.
• Added (optional) support for building without System.Core.dll dependency.
• Disabled AppDomain.ProcessExit hook to run shutdown hooks when running on Mono to workaround https://bugzilla.xamarin.com/show_bug.cgi?id=5650.
• Several verifier fixes.
• Several metadata reflection fixes.
• Fixed two try/finally block code gen bugs.
• Various other minor fixes.
• IKVM.Reflection: Many minor bug fixes and improvements.
• IKVM.Reflection: Added most new .NET 4.5 APIs.
• IKVM.Reflection: Added experimental support for generating Windows Runtime (.winmd) assemblies.
• IKVM.Reflection: Added missing DefineResource() APIs to ModuleBuilder and AssemblyBuilder.
• IKVM.Reflection: Added co-/contra-variance support to Type.IsAssignableFrom().
• IKVM.Reflection: Added support for using the .NETCore v4.5 aka Metro profile mscorlib.dll.
• IKVM.Reflection: Added UniverseOptions.DisablePseudoCustomAttributeRetrieval to disable returning pseudo custom attributes.
• IKVM.Reflection: Bug fix. Ignore unknown metadata streams.
• IKVM.Reflection: Bug fix. Set AddressOfRawData in IMAGE_DEBUG_DIRECTORY.

Runtime

• Code unloading (aka class GC) is not supported.
• In Java static initializers can deadlock, on .NET some threads can see uninitialized state in cases where deadlock would occur on the JVM.
• JNI
   
  • Only supported in the default AppDomain.
  • Only the JNICALL calling convention is supported! (On Windows, HotSpot appears to also support the cdecl calling convention).
  • Cannot call string contructors on already existing string instances
  • A few limitations in Invocation API support
     
    • The Invocation API is only supported when running on .NET.
    • JNI_CreateJavaVM: init options "-verbose[:class|:gc|:jni]", "vfprintf", "exit" and "abort" are not implemented. The JDK 1.1 version of JavaVMInitArgs isn't supported.
    • JNI_GetDefaultJavaVMInitArgs not implemented
    • JNI_GetCreatedJavaVMs only returns the JavaVM if the VM was started through JNI or a JNI call that retrieves the JavaVM has already occurred.
    • DestroyJVM is only partially implemented (it waits until there are no more non-daemon Java threads and then returns JNI_ERR).
    • DetachCurrentThread doesn't release monitors held by the thread.
  • Native libraries are never unloaded (because code unloading is not supported).
• The JVM allows any reference type to be passed where an interface reference is expected (and to store any reference type in an interface reference type field), on IKVM this results in an IncompatibleClassChangeError.
• monitorenter / monitorexit cannot be used on unitialized this reference.
• Floating point is not fully spec compliant.
• A method returning a boolean that returns an integer other than 0 or 1 behaves differently (this also applies to byte/char/short and for method parameters).
• Synchronized blocks are not async exception safe.
• Ghost arrays don't throw ArrayStoreException when you store an object that doesn't implement the ghost interface.
• Class loading is more eager than on the reference VM.
• Interface implementation methods are never really final (interface can be reimplemented by .NET subclasses).
• JSR-133 finalization spec change is not fully implemented. The JSR-133 changes dictate that an object should not be finalized unless the Object constructor has run successfully, but this isn't implemented.
• Strict class-file checking is not implemented.
• If a class with a finalizer and static initializer allocates instances of itself in the static initializer and the static initializer subsequently fails, the .NET runtime may abort the application when trying to finalize the objects.

Static Compiler (ikvmc)

• Some subtle differences with ikvmc compiled code for public members inherited from non-public base classes (so called "access stubs"). Because the access stub lives in a derived class, when accessing a member in a base class, the derived cctor will be run whereas java (and ikvm) only runs the base cctor.
• Try blocks around base class ctor invocation result in unverifiable code (no known compilers produce this type of code).
• Try/catch blocks before base class ctor invocation result in unverifiable code (this actually happens with the Eclipse compiler when you pass a class literal to the base class ctor and compile with -target 1.4).
• Only code compiled together during a single compilation fully obeys the JLS binary compatibility rules.

Class Library

Most class library code is based on OpenJDK 7u6 build 24. Below is a list of divergences and IKVM.NET specific implementation notes.

The entire public API is available, so "Not implemented." for javax.smartcardio, for example, means that the API is there but there is no back-end to provide the actual smartcard communication support. "Not supported." means that the code is there and probably works at least somewhat, but that I'm less likely to fix bugs reported in these areas, but patches are welcome, of course.

Specific API notes:

• java.lang.Thread.stop(Throwable t) doesn't support throwing arbitrary exceptions on other threads (only java.lang.ThreadDeath).
• java.lang.Thread.holdsLock(Object o) causes a spurious notify on the object (this is allowed by the J2SE 5.0 spec).
• java.lang.String.intern() strings are never garbage collected.
• Weak/soft references and reference queues are inefficient and do not fully implement the required semantics.
• java.lang.ref.SoftReference: Soft references are not guaranteed to be cleared before an OutOfMemoryError is thrown.
• Threads started outside of Java aren't "visible" (e.g. in ThreadGroup.enumerate()) until they first call Thread.currentThread().
• java.lang.Thread.getState() returns WAITING or TIMED_WAITING instead of BLOCKING when we're inside Object.wait() and blocking to re-acquire the monitor.
• java.nio.channel.FileChannel.lock() shared locks are only supported on Windows NT derived operating systems.
• java.lang.SecurityManager: Deprecated methods not implemented: classDepth(String), inClass(String), classLoaderDepth(), currentLoadedClass(), currentClassLoader(), inClassLoader()

Supported Platforms

This release has been tested on the following CLI implementations / platforms: