AppleCommander/NATIVE-COMPILE

Notes on attempts to compile AppleCommander natively... ultimately should
be directions!


Issues (general):
1) Unable to handle graphics (images) in native mode.  Need to patch code in
   compile process manually to get a clean compile.


*********************
**     LINUX       **
*********************

See build/build-applecommander-linux-gtk for the script which builds
an executable of AppleCommander.  The build/build-swt-linux-gtk script
builds the SWT swt.so file.


**********************
**     WINDOWS      **
**********************

Building AppleCommander for Windows using MinGW (2.0.3 with GCJ update).
See build/build-applecommander-mingw for the current script.

1.  Using MinGW, date related support classes are not compiled in.  This is a known
    issue and there is a suggested work-around posted here:
	http://gcc.gnu.org/ml/java/2002-04/msg00180.html
    Basically, force a reference to the classes which cause the error - the problem
    lies in classes loaded by reflection, so this forces these classes to be
    compiled in.  The suggested prelude is:
        // static references to these classes ensure that the linker will include them
        private static Class c1 = gnu.java.locale.Calendar.class;
        private static Class c2 = java.util.GregorianCalendar.class;
        private static Class c3 = gnu.gcj.convert.Input_ASCII.class;
        private static Class c4 = gnu.gcj.convert.Input_UTF8.class;
        private static Class c5 = gnu.gcj.convert.Input_8859_1.class;
        private static Class c6 = gnu.java.locale.LocaleInformation.class;
        private static Class c7 = gnu.gcj.convert.Output_ASCII.class;
    Presumably, this is just needed in one class - probably the class which contains
    the main method.  I am currently pasting this into AppleCommander.java itself.

2.  GraphicsFilter still cannot contain references to the JDK 1.4 ImageIO libraries,
    nor the SUN-specific JPEG classes.  References to these classes need to be commented
    out -- essentially rendering the graphics filter useless.  The user-interface should
    auto-detect this and give no options for image codecs.

    This also suggests that the GraphicsFilter needs to be re-engineered to be less rigid.
    The filter itself should accept (or detect, I don't know yet) via Reflection what
    classes are available and choose an appropriate filter.  This would/could change
    the compile process to just delete the inappropriate filters and the GrapicsFilter
    class would auto-adjust to the loss by choosing a more appropraite (if less capable)
    filter.

3.  Resources can be compiled/atteched to a specific Java class.  AppleCommander has
    a number of resources that should be built into the exe class.  This will simplify
    the distribution to be the AppleCommander executable and the SWT support DLL.
    ** DONE **  See the AppleCommander build script.

4.  UPX appears to be a very good compression tool for executables.  It should be
    standard practice (and part of the automated build process) to run the final EXE
    and DLL files through UPX to ensure a small filesize.
    ** DONE **  See the AppleCommander build script.

5.  There are speed issues with the compiled version of AppleCommander.  They do not
    appear to be present when run as a normal Java/SWT application.  It has not been
    determined if this is AppleCommander or SWT-related yet.