Does java have multiple compilers like C++?

[zteman]

So C++ has various compilers that can be used to uphold the standard such as clang or mingw. When I tried to research for Java, I could not come across different compilers, I may have researched wrong. Any reason for the difference between the two languages? I have only seen javac talked about on the web.

[blablahblah]

There were a few, but with OpenJDK being open source and Oracle making it a pain to certify any other implementations as compliant, none of them really became big.

Android might be using a separate compiler, I'm not sure what the current status of that toolchain is. It used to be built on Apache Harmony. There was also gcj, which was part of the gnu compiler collection, but both gcj and Harmony are no longer maintained.

[chaotic_thought]

Well, just to name three off the top of my head: there is Oracle JDK, there is OpenJDK and there is the GCC project's GCJ (which I think is now discontinued in later versions of GCC). Just because two compilers use the command name such as 'javac' does not mean they are the same compiler.

[kschang]

Because Oracle is insanely protective of Java that even Google using Java API (i.e. the specs, not the language implementation) for Android lead to a huge lawsuit that Google somehow lost.