[armedbear-devel] Some thoughts on classloaders, ...

[Don Cohen]

Matthew D. Swank writes:

 > Well in the context of abcl, a Common Lisp implementation that
 > _targets_ the JVM, perhaps we could have a more fruitful discussion if
 > you focus on what jvm bytecodes represent:
 > http://java.sun.com/docs/books/jvms/second_edition/html/VMSpecTOC.doc.html.
 > 
 > No matter how you are interacting with a class loader, no matter what

I don't understand why you have to interact with a class loader in
order to create a compiled function.
Perhaps you're saying that the only way to create executable code in
JVM is via the class loader.  In other words that JVM does not support
methods that make a compiled function object out of a byte vector, and
doesn't even give you any way to build such a thing.  I've looked at
the jvm spec a little, but it takes a lot of searching and analysis to
know for sure that something like this CANNOT be done.  If it cannot
then I would tend to view that as an unfortunate omission from the spec.
Is there any reason the spec should not allow that?  The only thing I
can see is that the designers of the language just didn't imagine it
being used this way.

 > the concrete representation of the byte code is in the compiler
 > implementation, when it's loaded, when java sees it, it's all classes
 > and methods. 
 > It's not clisp bytecode, it's not p-code, it's not even Squeak s-code
 > (though that's probably closer), it's Java. That means the issues are
 > very concrete: how is it possible to make compiled classes available to
 > the JVM (presumably w/o using the file system).
I don't see why compiled code can only come from compiled classes.
But if all compiled code has to be in a class then I also don't see
why compiled classes (is there any other kind?) have to come from the 
class loader.  Why are they not objects that can be created by the JVM
by code like new Class(...).
Perhaps that's what the class loader is, but it only supports
something like new Class(classfile) ?  Again I don't see why it should
not support new Class on some other sort of object specifying the
class and allowing byte vectors as the representation of compiled code. 
Why should it not just allow creation of classes by new Class() and
then allow you to add functions (and data fields, and subclasses, etc)
to the class?

Could this be a difference in perspective between java and lisp
programmers/implementers/designers?