Sorry to reply late to this thread. First I think concentrating on a native bytcode compiler for java makes excellent sense it decouples you from the front end implementation. And I agree that the eclipse compiler is a good choice. I'd have to add that jikes is also resonable.
I would like to say that my intrest in gcjx is not so much a java compiler but as a framework for developing native compilers for objects oriented languages like ruby python etc etc. Thus I think in a bigger context were gcjx became more of a compiler suite for languages that generally are only implemented as interpeted is important. So I think there is a lot of value in gcjx from this view point and a compiler target for bytecode is not the solution for this class of problems. Also C++ probably makes more sense for a generic frontend then java does. Now it may be possible to extend the bytecode to handle efficient compliation of languages such as ruby and thats pretty intresting but generally bytecode makes implicit restrictions on the language MS CLR is not truely generic for example but certianly it more complete then java bytecode. I really don't see bytecode->native compilers ever being really generic.
