On the current main page of java.sun.com

http://java.sun.com/

In the Developer Spotlight section, under the heading "Available for Evaluation"

there is a link to download Java SE for Arm.

The link goes to a survey page

http://java.sun.com/j2se/embedded/su...l?download=arm

If you fill out the required fields you can download it.

There are a couple of caveats. First, it has a limited life. Second, it is for Java 1.4.2 so not quite the latest and greatest.

I haven't tried it yet but intend to.

I'm not going to fill in my name and address etc. just to see what it's about, and the page doesn't provide any information.. if you did fill out that form, what did you see? Is there a Hildon/Nokia IT version at all, or some other ARM platforms? There is ARM and then there is ARM..

The download is made available, along with instructions for use. It is just a tar/zip distribution so you can transfer it to your N800 and run it directly.

The readme says that it is a generic version for all ARM, so they haven't taken advantage of any special instruction set for different ARM processors.

It's nice & small, and compiled for Linux.

Unfortunately, it's not using the new armel EABI, so won't run on anything but OS 2005 AFAICT.

Well, not certain about why (may be the armel EABI), but trying to run "java" from a command prompt results in the error "/bin/sh: ./java: not found". This occurs even if the $PATH is set properly.

"file java" on the executable results in "bin/java: ELF 32-bit LSB executable, ARM, version 1 (ARM), for GNU/Linux 2.4.3, dynamically linked (uses shared libs), stripped"

Short version, looks like it won't run, but the Release Notes file says that Sun's engineers can provide custom builds - anyone want to request one?

The "not found" message is the armel EABI.

I got a reply from Sun about Java SE for ARM. It follows at the end of this post.

The most interesting points for me were 'year end' and 'headless' (I assume meaning no AWT/Swing).

I checked on SWT for fun... no ARM port, but they have versions of SWT that use GTK.

darrell

---------------------------------------------


Thank you for your interest in Sun's Java SE for Embedded Use
technology.

The requirements for the embedded JRE for Linux/ARM eval
currently available at our website as a download and which you
tried recently, are as follows:

* ARM9 v5 compatible processor
* Little-endian mode
* Soft-float (big-endian doubles)
* Linux Kernel 2.6.8 or later
* glibc 2.3.2 or later
* ABI is not EABI (EABI support started with gcc 4.1)
* Headless: no support for video/keyboard/mouse

Please not that we expect to have a new JRE for Linux/ARM eval
available by year-end that will support EABI. Please occasionally
check our website within the next few months -- it should appear
on the following page:

http://java.sun.com/j2se/embedded/offerings.html

I hope the above information has been helpful to you. If you
have any further questions at any time, please don't hesitate to
let us know.

EABI version by year-end is very interesting, although the lack of any GUI support is concerning.

Having said that, it should be possible to do a Hildon JNI library which allows Hildon applications to be written in the Java language, using the Java library as an alternative to Swing, AWT or SWT.

It's really a Hildon-compatible AWT/SWT/Swing implementation that's holding things back on my end.