palmskog/camljava

Low-level OCaml/Java interface

CamlJava - an OCaml/Java interface

DESCRIPTION

This is a very preliminary release of CamlJava, an OCaml/Java interface based on the following schema:

         Caml/C interface       JNI (Java Native Interface)
  Caml <------------------> C <-----------------------------> Java

Currently, CamlJava provides a low-level, weakly-typed OCaml interface very similar to the JNI. Java object references are mapped to an abstract type, and various JNI-like operations are provided to allow Java method invocation, field access, and more. A basic callback facility (allowing Java code to invoke methods on Caml objects) is also provided, although some stub Java code must be written by hand.

In the future, a higher-level, strongly-typed interface will be provided, whereas Java classes are mapped directly to Caml classes. This raises fairly delicate type mapping issues, though, so don't hold your breath.

REQUIREMENTS

• This release of CamlJava requires Objective Caml version 3.08 or later.

• A Java implementation that supports JNI (Java Native Interface). So far, only Sun's JDK has been tested.

INSTALLATION ON A UNIX PLATFORM

• Edit Makefile.config to define parameters depending on your Java installation. As distributed, the library is set up for Sun's JDK version 1.4.1 on a Linux x86 platform.

make
make install

For testing:

make tst

INSTALLATION ON A WINDOWS PLATFORM

• Works with the MSVC port of OCaml for Windows.
  GNU make and Cygwin tools are required to do the installation.

• Edit Makefile.config.msvc to define parameters depending on your Java installation.

• make -f Makefile.msvc make -f Makefile.msvc install

• For testing: make -f Makefile.msvc tst

USAGE

The OCaml module is named "Jni". A good knowledge of the JNI is assumed; see Sun's JNI book or http://java.sun.com/products/jdk/1.2/docs/guide/jni/ Then, the comments in lib/jni.mli should make sense.

Usage: ocamlc -I +camljava jni.cma ... or ocamlopt -I +camljava jni.cmxa ...

See the programs in the test directory for examples of use.

LICENSE

GNU Library General Public License version 2.

FEEDBACK

e-mail the author, [email protected].