Can anyone be so helpful as to point me out some comparison between the different Java compilers out there. I am interrested in which one gives me the best performance, and memory is more important to me than computation speed.
I have always used sun's compiler as an old habit, but maybe it's worth checking out the alternatives? What are the benefits of using a particular compiler, and what about incompatibility issues (I'm sure there are...).
Any pointers are welcome.

As I understand it, I haven't tested this much, gcj is decent but not there yet.

I remember the pains RedHat went through to get eclipse to compile with gcj. It's just beginning to be a valid alternative in the new experimental gcc 4 branch. On top of it all, eclipse runs slower using it compared to compiling with javac or jikes, which means it isn't quite as good.

jikes is faster than javac, tends to generate better error messages as well. It's mostly compatible flag-wise with javac, and supports the whole language as far as I know. It's kind of a drop-in replacement for javac. In my experience it's faster than javac by quite a bit. I haven't benchmarked to see if the code it generates if faster or slower, but regardless it isn't noticeably different. I don't know of any major differences in memory use.

OK, thanks for the info. Just to clarify, Jikes is the compiler that is used by Eclipse, right?

eclipse can use whatever jre you want. Take a look at the link:

http://www.eclipse.org/eclipse/faq/e...q.html#users_3