The main change here is to use a lazily-populated vector to associate
runtime data with classes instead of referencing them directly from
the class which requires updating immutable references in the heap
image. The other changes employ other strategies to avoid trying to
update immutable references.
The biggest change in this commit is to split the system classloader
into two: one for boot classes (e.g. java.lang.*) and another for
application classes. This is necessary to make OpenJDK's security
checks happy.
The rest of the changes include bugfixes and additional JVM method
implementations in classpath-openjdk.cpp.
Whereas the GNU Classpath port used the strategy of patching Classpath
with core classes from Avian so as to minimize changes to the VM, this
port uses the opposite strategy: abstract and isolate
classpath-specific features in the VM similar to how we abstract away
platform-specific features in system.h. This allows us to use an
unmodified copy of OpenJDK's class library, including its core classes
and augmented by a few VM-specific classes in the "avian" package.
In order to facilitate making the VM compatible with multiple class
libraries, it's useful to separate the VM-specific representation of
these classes from the library implementations. This commit
introduces VMClass, VMField, and VMMethod for that purpose.
In PersistentSet.remove, we were modifying the child node in place
instead of making a copy to update, which would corrupt older
revisions. This commit ensures that we always create a copy if
necessary.