* Frode Petersen fropeter@online.no [2007-02-26 06:24]:
One thing to confirm is that you are indeed running with the Sun VM. If you've downloaded plugins that aren't shipped with Fedora, they don't contain the gcj-compiled bits and if you're just running with our stock setup, they'll be purely interpreted by gij. They'll run slower than if there are .sos corresponding to the jars. But if you're running with the Sun VM then that's irrelevant. Andrew
One of the plugins refused to run with less than Java 1.5, I have not checked the other in that respect.
Then you must use the Sun (or IBM or BEA) VM. gcj in rawhide has just recently merged in the 1.5 branch of GNU Classpath so you can expect that in Fedora 7.
But what you're saying here, if I get you right, is that if I need Java 1.5, there wouldn't be any advantage in using Fedora Eclipse over the upstream version, but if the Fedora Java stack suffices for the plugins, Eclipse itself would run faster, although the plugins won't benefit. Confused again? :-)
I don't think it's worth talking about absolute performance of gcj-compiled binaries vs. the Sun JIT 'cause there are a lot of factors and it's difficult to get hard numbers that apply in all cases.
As for using Fedora Eclipse over an upstream download, it's up to you. We include a few patches. These have either been applied upstream after the release we're shipping or are useful for multi-user, RPM-based installations. There's also the benefit of having it installed and managed by yum and the whole RPM infrastructure but I figure that goes without saying :)
Andrew