Yesterday evening Debian GNU/Linux 3.1 (codename “Sarge”) got released. Thanks to all who helped with the release. It took a long time but finally did it.
The Free Java support in this release of Debian is much better then before. It contains a recent version of kaffe which works pretty flawlessly with much applictions. Its even possible to run the Apache Tomcat version included in Sarge just fine (with the exception that the security manager needs to be deactivated).
Now its time to focus on the next release with the codename “Etch”. I’m preparing Debian packages of Eclipse 3.1 which use GCC 4.0 to build it. This version of Eclipse will contain natively compile jars too. It will be possible to run Eclipse natively with GCJ or in the ordinary way with kaffe, sablevm, etc. Together with native Eclipse in Fedora Core the Classpath community was a good base to develop/maintain their code and complete Java applications. With the Java-Gnome plugin its possible to write full-blown GNOME applications. Even non-Java people seem to be interested in using Eclipse, e.g. for C++ development with the CDT plugin.
All in all its a good way into the future.