Java News from Monday, December 8, 2003

Version 1.1.3 of the Kaffe open source Java virtual machine for various Unixes has been released. According to developer Jim Pick,

As this is a development release, it is essentially a snapshot of what's happening in CVS, with limited testing. Even though this is not a production release, it contains a lot of improvements over 1.0.7, which was release over half a year ago. I anticipate that most people will have less trouble with this release.

Here are some highlights of new things done since the last development release:

He also reports that Kaffe can now run JBoss, Eclipse 3.0M4, and gjdoc/libxmlj. SWing does not appear to be supported yet, though which rules out a lot of applications including jEdit and the JUnit GUI Test Runner. It was not yet able to pass the full XOM test suite either, possibly due to problems with JUnit.


Software 7 GmbH has released Helen 1.5, a tool for creating online help systems in JavaHelp format. Helen 1.5 adds full support for the newly-released JavaHelp 2.0 features including improved printing, glossary and favorites navigational views, more extensibility, and expanded customization options. Prices start at $169 for a single license, with discounts for multiple licenses. Users who have purchased Helen 1.1 on or after March 13, 2003 are eligible for a free upgrade. Upgrades from 1.0 are $49.


Julien Ponge has released IzPack 3.4.0, an open source tool for building cross-platform installers in Java. This release fixes assorted bugs and removes the deprecated front end. It's published under the GPL.