jikes

IBM Java Compiler

Jikes(TM) is a compiler that translates Java(TM) source files as defined in "The Java Language Specification" into the byte code instruction set and binary format defined in "The Java Virtual Machine Specification." You may wonder why the world needs another Java compiler, considering that Sun provides javac free with its SDK. Jikes has four advantages that make it a valuable contribution to the Java community: * Open source. Jikes is OSI Certified Open Source Software. OSI Certified is a certification mark of the Open Source Initiative. * Strictly Java compatible. Jikes strives to adhere to both "The Java Language Specification" and "The Java Virtual Machine Specification" as tightly as possible and does not support subsets, supersets, or other variations of the language. The FAQ describes some of the side effects of this strict language conformance. * High performance. Jikes is a high performance compiler, making it ideal for use with larger projects. * Dependency analysis. Jikes performs a dependency analysis on your code that provides two very useful features: Incremental builds and makefile generation. Note that you must set CLASSPATH correctly to use jikes.