Pre-Java 1 class files

[Marcono1234]

Hello,
it appears https://web.archive.org/web/20000824024201/http://java.sun.com:80/applets/archive/beta/beta.zip contains two pre-Java 1 class files with minor version: 2, major version: 45:

• Escher/classes/escherpaint.class
• Escher/classes/generic_paint.class

I hope they are useful for you (@Konloch, maybe you are interested as well?). Do you already have pre-Java 1 files for testing?

[leibnitz27]

Excellent! That helps with https://twitter.com/LeeAtBenf/status/1136035843955732486 !

[leibnitz27]

Happy to say CFR handles both of those nicely ;)

[Marcono1234]

Also it appears the class file version change must have happened before v1.0b1, since the README file of https://web.archive.org/web/19961219153722/http://www.mcp.com:80/que/javarc/se_java/macjdk.zip claims this is its version and its classes are already using minor version: 3.

And here are some more minor version: 2 class files:

• https://web.archive.org/web/20190822203215/http://www.mit.edu/afs.new/sipb/user/marc/hotjava/demo/classes/AudioItem.class
• https://web.archive.org/web/20190822202300/http://www.mit.edu/afs.new/sipb/user/marc/hotjava/demo/classes/BounceItem.class
• https://web.archive.org/web/20190822203426/http://www.mit.edu/afs.new/sipb/user/marc/hotjava/demo/classes/ImageLoop.class
• https://web.archive.org/web/20190822202557/http://www.mit.edu/afs.new/sipb/user/marc/hotjava/demo/classes/TicTacToe.class
• https://web.archive.org/web/20190822202640/http://www.mit.edu/afs.new/sipb/user/marc/hotjava/demo/classes/BidirectionalBubbleSortAlgorithm.class
• https://web.archive.org/web/20190822202703/http://www.mit.edu/afs.new/sipb/user/marc/hotjava/demo/classes/QSortAlgorithm.class
• https://web.archive.org/web/20190822202755/http://www.mit.edu/afs.new/sipb/user/marc/hotjava/demo/classes/Hangman.class
• https://web.archive.org/web/20190822205110/http://www.mit.edu/afs.new/sipb/user/marc/hotjava/doc/appguide/classes/MinimalApp.class
• https://web.archive.org/web/20190822204730/http://www.mit.edu/afs.new/sipb/user/marc/hotjava/doc/appguide/classes/AppWithAttribute.class
• https://web.archive.org/web/20190822204806/http://www.mit.edu/afs.new/sipb/user/marc/hotjava/demo/classes/SampleApplet.class
• https://web.archive.org/web/20190822204852/http://www.mit.edu/afs.new/sipb/user/marc/hotjava/demo/classes/SortItem.class
• https://web.archive.org/web/20190822204938/http://www.mit.edu/afs.new/sipb/user/marc/hotjava/demo/classes/SortAlgorithm.class
• https://web.archive.org/web/20190822204956/http://www.mit.edu/afs.new/sipb/user/marc/hotjava/demo/classes/BubbleSortAlgorithm.class

As you might have noticed from the timestamps, these files are still live available! I am trying to archive more of these pages, but it appears the web archive has some caching issues.

What is also interesting is that apparently between alpha1 and alpha2 the OAK rename happened:
https://web.archive.org/web/20190822203813/http://www.mit.edu/afs.new/sipb/user/marc/hotjava/doc/changes/changes.html

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Edit: It appears this might actually be your "rich seam of ancient class files". It appears that under classes all the class files are present, e.g.: https://web.archive.org/web/20190822214533/http://www.mit.edu/afs.new/sipb/user/marc/hotjava/classes/java/lang/IOException.class

https://web.archive.org/web/20190822214133/http://www.mit.edu/afs.new/sipb/user/marc/hotjava/doc/rpi/rpi_2.html indicates that there is also an include folder. And at this point it would not suprise me if the sources and all the java tools (javac, javadoc, ...) are present as well, though I was not able to find them yet.

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Edit 2: Yes, javac is present:
https://web.archive.org/web/20190822225509/http://www.mit.edu/afs.new/sipb/user/marc/hotjava/bin/javac
https://web.archive.org/web/20190822231416/http://www.mit.edu/afs.new/sipb/user/marc/hotjava/bin/sun4/javac
https://web.archive.org/web/20190822231444/http://www.mit.edu/afs.new/sipb/user/marc/hotjava/bin/sun4/java

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Maybe it would make sense to contact MIT, or JDK members so they contact MIT. I guess everyone would be interested in the complete content of this folder. What do you think?

[leibnitz27]

Excellent jarchaeology! <-- if that's not a thing, it is now.

These are some great resources, thanks.

[Marcono1234]

I have found complete versions of HotJava 1.0a2 some time ago and created a repository for them now: https://github.com/Marcono1234/HotJava-1.0-alpha

Hopefully that is useful for you.

It appears CFR (and other decompilers) makes some mistakes due to different usage of instructions (ifne being used for null checks), probably does not consider the different meaning of access flag 0x40=ACC_THREADSAFE (as mentioned by you on Twitter) and fails decompiling a certain class (SortItem.class).
Are you still interested in this? Given that this version is not officially supported by Oracle / OpenJDK anymore and that there are only a small amount of class files of this version, I could totally understand if you would like to work on different issues instead.

[leibnitz27]

That's amazing. Thanks!

It is, of course, a terrible waste of time. Which is what all hobby programming is supposed to be! Cheers! ;)