By Dwight
Johnson, Linux Today
Inprise will announce tomorrow its Kylix project which will
develop a new Rapid Application Development environment native to
Linux. Kylix will incorporate the best features of its Delphi and
C++ development products for the Windows platform and utilize
Borland’s Linux-native C, C++ and object Pascal compilers released
last summer. The Kylix project will support component based
development with an entirely new Visual Component Library developed
native to Linux.
According to Michael Swindell, Inprise group product manager for
Linux, porting of applications developed on Delphi and CBuilder for
Windows will be simple and straightforward.
However, Kylix is not a port of Delphi and CBuilder but a new
product using entirely Linux standards and Linux components while
incorporating the best features of the Borland Windows development
tools.
Swindell told Linux Today that the goal for Kylix is a complete
applications development environment that will support the
development of both open-source and proprietary applications.
Kylix will support the development of both database and Internet
enabled applications. It will support all application development
models from Fat to Ultra-thin. Supported standards and protocols
will include: CGI, NSAPI, XML and DHTML for distributed Web
applications.
Initially, Kylix will support MySQL, said Swindell, and further
support for commercial databases will be announced later.
Inprise is targeting mid 2000 for release of the product.
The announcement of Kylix comes on the heals of Inprise’s
announcement today of a free download for its JBuilder Java 2
Just-In-Time Compiler for Linux.
Swindell told Linux Today that the Java 2 Just-In-Time Compiler
for Linux is based on the Blackdown JDK for Linux and represents a
significant performance boost for Java applications running under
Linux.
The Java 2 Just-In-Time Compiler for Linux is free for any use
but is not open-source — only the object executable is available
for download. Swindell also cautioned that this is a preview
release of the Java 2 Just-In-Time Compiler for Linux as it is
waiting for Blackdown to complete its JDK 2.0 release and
applications using it should not be used for production work.
Swindell told Linux Today that Inprise is still investigating
how it will support the open-source licensing model but that
presently they are committed to delivering superior application
development tools to the Linux platform.