README

libjit
------

This library in this distribution implements Just-In-Time compilation
functionality.  Unlike other JIT's, this one is designed to be independent
of any particular virtual machine bytecode format or language.  The hope
is that Free Software projects can get a leg-up on proprietry VM vendors
by using this library rather than spending large amounts of time writing
their own JIT from scratch.

This JIT is also designed to be portable to multiple archictures.
If you run libjit on a machine for which a native code generator is
not yet available, then libjit will fall back to interpreting the code.
This way, you don't need to write your own interpreter for your
bytecode format if you don't want to.

The library is distributed under the terms of the GNU Lesser General
Public License.  See the COPYING.LESSER file for details.

The documentation for libjit is in Texinfo format.  A general overview
is in "doc/libjit.texi" with the remainder of the function documentation
in the source files themselves.

Building libjit
---------------

You will need GNU make, Bison, and Flex to build libjit, and it is
also highly recommended that you use gcc.  To configure, build,
and install, you would do the following:

        ./configure
        make
        make install

Compiler notes
--------------

It is highly recommended that you build libjit with gcc and not
some other C compiler, even if you plan to use some other C
compiler to access the library.  We make use of a number of gcc
builtins to assist with stack walking, dynamic function calls,
and closures.

It is also recommended that you don't use the "-fomit-frame-pointer"
option when compiling programs that use libjit.  Otherwise stack walking
may not work correctly, leading to problems when throwing exceptions.
The configure script for libjit will detect the presence of this
option in CFLAGS and remove it when building libjit itself.

Contacting the authors
----------------------

The primary author is Rhys Weatherley at Southern Storm Software, Pty Ltd.
He can be reached via e-mail at "rweather@southern-storm.com.au".

The latest version of libjit will always be available from the Southern
Storm Web site:

        http://www.southern-storm.com.au/libjit/

Discussions about libjit can be carried out on the DotGNU Portable.NET
mailing list, "pnet-developers@dotgnu.org".  Visit "www.dotgnu.org"
for details on how to subscribe to this list.  A separate mailing list
will be created if there is demand for it.