The joint Groovy / Java compiler does, but you still need a compile step. And I use that feature (groovyc), and love it dearly!

I am talking about runtime compilation of Java. It is sort of out of the domain of Groovy to do so (not the polite thing to do), since you'd be "interpreting" Java on the fly, the same way Groovy is "interpreted" on the fly. Java has built in support for doing this sort of thing, but I think it only works with the SDK, not the JDK.

Anyhow, you can freely mix .groovy and .java using GroovyC (1.5.x). Why not allow mixing them freely from uncompiled script files as well? That way, if you are working with groovy as a scripting language, you can just put your speed critical code into a Java class, in the same package, and there is no need to add a compile step for the Java portion.

It is also kind of a cool way for a beginner to run Java. You could even add support to run *.java files from the command line, the way we run *.groovy files now.

Well, it may not be a GOOD idea, but it is an idea nonetheless. And I think it would be easy to do.

Jason Smith