The Java 1.1 Development Kit is now available on the RCS workstations running the Solaris 2.x and AIX 4.x operating systems. (Java is a programming language which developed from a project started by Sun Microsystems in 1991 to build an operating system for consumer electronic devices.)
Programming languages like C and C++ compile source code into machine-level object code, and the resulting program (binary) will only run on the platform for which it was compiled. By contrast, Java compiles source code into platform-independent 'bytecode'; each client machine must run a Java interpreter (the Java Virtual Machine), which performs runtime execution of these bytecodes. The advantage of this is that the interpreter needs only to be ported once to a given platform; once that is done, application developers don't need to worry about the platform on which the application will be run, or differences between native compilers. Instead, they can write portable Java, which is compiled by a platform-independent Java compiler and executed on the Java interpreter, and is ported to various platforms.
The Java Development Kit version 1.1 consists of the following components:
Compiling, debugging, and running Java applications involves using various programs that come with the JDK. For example, to compile a Java source code file called SimpleJavaApp.java, you would issue the following command from a UNIX prompt:
javac SimpleJavaApp.java
Assuming this produced no errors, you could then run the resulting bytecode (in this case, the SimpleJavaApp.class file) by issuing the following command:
java SimpleJavaApp
For additional help in using Java, see the documentation located at the URL http://www.javasoft.com.
If you have any further questions about using Java, please contact the consultants at the ACS Help Desk, or direct electronic mail to consult@rpi.edu.