ANILib -- Asynchronous Native Interface Library

ANILib, the Asynchronous Native Interface Library, is an add-on package for this Virtual Machine. It provides an API for using native threads in this VM for executing long running native methods.

ANILib was previously included as an bundled component of this VM. In this release, we have separated out the ANILib functionality into a separate package to improve maintainability and achieve a more modular software design.

Version Information

This is version 1.0.1 of ANILib.

Build Instructions

This version of ANILib has built-in support for 3 platforms:

• win32_i386
• linux_i386
• linux_arm

The source code has been structured so that it will be easy to add support for other platforms.

To build ANILib for your selected platform, you need to follow these steps. (Note the instructions assumes you're building for linux_i386.)

1. First, you need to build the VM. This can be done by setting up the JVMWorkSpace environment variable, and then executing the gnumake command inside $(JVMWorkSpace)/build/linux_i386.

2. Change to the build/linux_i386 subdirectory of the ANILib source distribution, and execute the gnumake command. This produces the following output files:
   • build/linux_i386/product/cldc_vm_ani
   • build/linux_i386/product/libani.a
   • build/linux_i386/test_classes/SocketTest.class

3. By default, the product variant of ANILib is produced. If you wish to build for other variants, please use commands such as:
   • gnumake BUILD=debug
   • gnumake BUILD=release
   • gnumake BUILD=product

Running Test Programs

ANILib comes with a sample program, SocketTest, which tests the capabilities of a sample socket protocol. To Execute it, try these commands:

cd build/linux_i386
./product/cldc_vm_ani -cp test_classes SocketTest -host www.sun.com

Please read the comments in src/tests/SocketTest.java for a complete list of options provided by SocketTest for testing different features in ANILib.

Linking with ANILib

To use the ANI_XXX() functions exported by ANILib, simply link with libani.a (or ani.lib for the win32_i386 platform).

Changes from Previous Version

This version of ANILib adds a new API function, ANI_Initialize(), which must be called before you use any other ANI functions.

Also, when your program is about exit, please call ANI_Dispose() to free up resources allocated by ANILib.

When compiling your code, please use the src/share/ani.h header file included in this ANILib source distribution.