This FAQ (Frequently Asked Questions) is dedicated to developers who want to build their own Jikes compiler, and also provides all the necessary information for them (you?) to get involved in Jikes and contribute to this great project.

The first section is dedicated to what a Jikes developer needs to know for day-to-day (or night-to-night?) work. It describes the development stages used for Jikes, and explains how this chain works (to some extent).

The second part of this FAQ lists all the platforms on which Jikes is known to compile and run. Each topic is dedicated to one particular platform, explaining the platform-specific problems and tuning that may be necessary to make it work. If an official binary is available from the Jikes Web site, the options used to produce it are described there.

The advisable way of using this FAQ is to read the first section to learn what the development process of Jikes is, then jump to your platform to learn about the specifics for it.