After what feels like an eternity, I've finally released IKVM 0.36. The binaries are identical to the ones in rc6.

Release Notes

This document lists the known issues and incompatibilities.

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.
• Volatile fields are not marked with modopt(volatile).
• 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 cannot be distinguished from object arrays (isinstance and casting don't differentiate and ArrayStoreException isn't thrown).
• Class loading is more eager than on the reference VM.
• Object instances don't get created at new, but only at the invokespecial of the constructor. This causes observable differences with classes that have a finalizer when the constructor arg evaluation throws an exception [with the JSR-133 change in finalization, this is no longer a spec issue, but since the reference VM doesn't correctly implement JSR-133 it still is an implementation difference].
• Interface implementation methods are never really final (interface can be reimplemented by .NET subclasses).
• JSR-133 finalization spec change is not implemented. The JSR-133 changes dictate that an object should not be finalized unless the Object constructor has run successfully.

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 in a single assembly fully obeys the JLS binary compability rules.
• An assembly can only contain one resource with a particular name.
• Passing incorrect command line options to ikvmc may result in an exception rather than a proper error messages.

Class Library

Most class library code is based on OpenJDK build 13. Below is a list of divergences and IKVM specific implementation notes.

The entire public API is available, so "Not implemented." for javax.print, for example, means that the API is there but there is no back-end to provide the actual printing 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.

In addition to the issues listed above, the extended charset providers are not included (the ones in charsets.jar in the JRE).

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.
• 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.io.File.getCanonicalPath() is broken on Mono on Windows.
• java.nio.channel.FileChannel.lock() shared locks are only supported on Windows NT derived operating systems.
• java.lang.ref.SoftReference: Soft references are not guaranteed to be cleared before an OutOfMemoryError is thrown.
• 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:

* Running on Mono has only been tested on x86, but Mono includes the native (platform specific) parts of IKVM, so any platform where Mono runs should in theory be able to run this IKVM release.

Partial Trust

Partial trust is not supported. The IKVM class library and runtime require Full Trust to be able to run.