This is the page where we provide answers to questions that are frequently asked by our customers as well as any late breaking news, bugs, known restrictions etc. related to Virtual Machinery's JHawk product will be posted

A list of changes made between versions 3.5 and 4 are listed here .

Frequently Asked Questions

1. Do you provide academic licenses?

We don't currently offer academic licenses. We do however allow an academic research department to share a single license between multiple post-graduate researchers as if it were a site license. We are in the process of setting up an academic program which we hope to introduce in time for the academic year 2010-2011. If you are interested in being informed when this is available contact us at info@virtualmachinery.com with 'Academic Program' in the subject of the message.

2. What is your support policy?

We provide one years support for point releases of a product. i.e. if you purchased JHawk 4 (the current release) less than one year ago you should receive still be receiving new updates. To upgrade to the latest release if you are outwith this period you simply purchase a new single user license. If you are a Site or Corporate license holder you only need to purchase the single user joint license with source as these licenses are currently a once off payment.

3.What is the current release of JHawk?

The current release of JHawk is 104g. This was released on 14th November 2009

Known bugs etc

While there are no known bugs in JHawk per se there are a couple of issues that may arise.

1. The introduction of the 'assert' keyword in Java 1.4

This version of JHawk will parse Java code written for versions of the Java compiler up to and including Java 1.6. Prior to Java 1.4 it was possible to use the word 'assert' in your code without any problem. As 'assert' is now a keyword code containing 'assert' in a position where it is deemed as being possibly a keyword e.g. variable, package, class or method names will not compile. JHawk will also detect this as a lexical error. It will continue processing other files but a message to the effect that 'assert' was detected in the code will appear in the system log.

2. The introduction of the 'enum' keyword in Java 1.5

This version of JHawk will parse Java code written for versions of the Java compiler up to and including Java 1.6. Prior to Java 1.5 it was possible to use the word 'enum' in your code without any problem. As 'enum' is now a keyword code containing 'enum' in a position where it is deemed as being possibly a keyword e.g. variable, package, class or method names will not compile. JHawk will also detect this as a lexical error. It will continue processing other files but a message to the effect that 'enum' was detected in the code will appear in the system log.

3. Running on Linux
You may see the following message (or something like it) when trying to run JHawk on Linux -

     Warning: Cannot convert string "Escape,_Key_Cancel" to type VirtualBinding
     Warning: Cannot convert string "Home,_Key_Begin" to type VirtualBinding
     Warning: Cannot convert string "F1,_Key_Help" to type VirtualBinding 
     Warning: Cannot convert string "ShiftF10,_Key_Menu" to type VirtualBinding
     Warning: Cannot convert string "F10,Shift_Key_Menu" to type VirtualBinding
     Warning: Cannot convert string "KP_Enter,Key_Execute" to type VirtualBinding
     Warning: Cannot convert string "AltReturn,Alt_Key_KP_Enter" to type VirtualBinding

This message is harmless but you can remove it by running the following -

xprop -root -remove _MOTIF_DEFAULT_BINDINGS

You can find a full reference to this problem at http://www.mail-archive.com/java-linux@java.blackdown.org/msg15007.html

3. Drive A: Not Ready Error on Windows

This is due to a bug in JRE 1.3 where instantiating a JFileChooser with the default FileSystemView (which JHawk does when it starts up) will cause a "drive A: not ready" error every time. This is because java.io.File.listRoots() does a SecurityManager.checkRead() which causes the OS to try to access drive A: even when there is no disk, causing an annoying "abort, retry, ignore" popup message.

This is fixed by upgrading to version 1.4. of the JRE.