Waba Goes Open Source

By Michael Foley

(04/22/01, 07:27:12 PM EDT)

Wabasoft has released its Waba programming platform to the open source community. Waba is a programming platform for small devices. The platform defines a language, a virtual machine, a class file format, and a set of foundation classes. Developers can use Java development tools to develop Waba programs.

Wabasoft's latest Software Development Kit 1.0 supports building Java-based applications for platforms including Linux, Microsoft Windows CE, MacOS, Palm OS, Solaris, and others through free third-party add-ons. Waba is not a derivative of Java and has no connection to Sun Microsystems, but its syntax, class file, and bytecode are strict subsets of the Java language syntax and formats.

Development in Waba requires working with command-line tools. There's also no support for Java features such as threads, long or double values, or exceptions. Waba software packages are used for building user interfaces and programming with strings, files, and the network.

Waba Software has donated their development tools and virtual machine to the open source community and can be freely downloaded from Wabasoft's web site, www.wabasoft.com, or waba.sourceforge.net