Java Compilers

Introduction to Java Compilers

Java Compilers are for the programming language. Every programming language has its program that executes the code return—converting the code written in human-understandable to translate in the language understood by machines. Java is easy to understand. If we write programs in java, they should be converted into machine language.

Machine language is nothing but 0’s and 1’s. To convert this code into byte code, java has its own set of compilers. Generally, we knew only a few compilers. And if you are new to java, then the possibility is you must know only one compiler called javac. Compilers give us the ability to interact with other platforms. We can run our program written in Java on any platform like Windows, Linux, MAC, etc. There is no restriction on which compiler should be used. But we should know the availability of different compilers for the time being. Now let’s look at what exactly it means.

What are Java Compilers?

Compilers are an interface between human language and machine understandable language. The Java compiler operates on the .java file and converts every class in the .java file into its corresponding .class file. This .class file can operate on any Operating System.

Hence java is a platform-independent language. Compiler javac converts our java file into machine language. Bytecode is called bytecode. It’s time to check out different environments.

Types of Java Compilers

Javac
Edison Design Group
GCJ
ECJ
Jikes
Power J
JIT
Client-Side Compiler
Server-Side Compiler

Lets us study in detail about different types of Compilers which are as follows:

1. Javac

Martin Odersky implements it at Sun Microsystems, which Oracle further owned. This javac compiler must be installed with any IDE to run a java program. Javac itself is written in Java language. This compiler is available for

2. Edison Design Group

It is a company that makes the EDG compiler. J. Stephen “Steve” Adamczyk implemented it in 1988. They mainly write compilers for preprocessing and parsing. This compiler is also available for Windows, UNIX, and other Oss, but this compiler is not available for any IDE.

3. GCJ

GCJ stands for GNU Compiler for Java. This is a free compiler available for Java Programming Language. This compiler compiles the java source code to a machine-understandable format. It can also compile JARs that contain bytecode. This compiler is only available for UNIX and not for other Operating Systems like Windows, and this is neither available for any IDE. This compiler can also compile C, C++, Fortran, Pascal, and other programming languages.

4. ECJ

This is an Eclipse compiler for Java, comes with Eclipse IDE, and is available for operating systems like Windows, UNIX, etc. With this compiler, if some part of the code has a compile-time error, the other part of the code can be tested whether working fine or not. This is not the case with javac, as you need to fix all the errors before compilation. With the Eclipse compiler, if your java source code has any compile-time error, it will go through it as a runtime exception. Also, this compiler can run in the background of IDE, and it speeds up the compilation compared to javac.

5. Jikes

This compiler was developed by Dave Shields and Philippe Charles at IBM, and it’s an OSI-certified open-source Java Compiler written in C++. It is a high-performance compiler used for large projects and much faster in compiling small projects than Sun’s compiler. Jikes was released in 1998 for Linux. The issue with the Jikes compiler is that it does not support Java 5 and above versions since there is no update from IBM. This compiler works best with JDK 1.3 and the below versions.

6. Power J

This compiler was written at Sybase, which was further owned by SAP. This is available for Windows and also for IDEs.

7. JIT

It stands for Just In Time compiler and is used to improve Java application performance. This compiler is enabled by default. It gets active when any method in java is called. JIT compiles the byte code of that method into machine code. It’s a component of the Java Runtime Environment that improves performance at run time.

8. Client-Side Compilers

The client-side compiler is C1, which is enabled through the –client at the JVM startup command-line option. It is used for Client-side applications with very few resources, reducing the applications’ startup time.

9. Server-Side Java Compilers

This is used for the application running at the server side, like server-side enterprise applications. The Client-side compiler is not enough for the applications running on the server-side. So the server-side compiler is C2, and this compiler gets enabled through –the server JVM startup command-line option. The more advanced algorithms and techniques can be used with the application with a server-side compiler.

Do we need to know all the Compilers to Work with Java?

No, you don’t need to get your hands dirty on each environment out there for the compiling process; as per your requirements and tools, you can select anyone from the above.

Conclusion

Java is an Object-Oriented Programming Language that compiles the code into byte code and then runs the code on any computer system that supports Java Virtual Machine. The compiler is a program that processes the high level of the source code of a programming language written by the developer into the machine-understandable format. These compilers are also written in some the programming languages like Pascal, C, Basic, Java, etc. In general, compilers can be written in any language which is powerful enough to write compilers.

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