[armedbear-devel] No JSR-223 code in abcl-src-0.15.tar.gz

[Alessio Stalla]

On Fri, Aug 28, 2009 at 7:52 AM, Mark Evenson<evenson at panix.com> wrote:
> On 8/27/09 6:33 PM, Alessio Stalla wrote:
>>
>> Greetings all,
>>
>> I have downloaded the 0.15 release of abcl from the official site, to
>> use it in a side-project at work. I found out that the archive does
>> not contain the src/org/armedbear/lisp/scripting directory, where the
>> JSR-223 stuff resides. Worse, the archive does contain the
>> META-INF/services/javax.script.ScriptEngineFactory, so when built the
>> jar actually declares it contains a JSR-223 implementation, but it
>> does not. How is the archive built? I think I saw tasks in the
>> Ant-based build file to zip the source, maybe those don't include the
>> scripting/ directory. If that is the case, I can fix it for build.xml.
>> I don't know how the Lisp based build works, though.
>
> Ant-based, aka build.xml, is the way we build releases, as far as I know, as
> the Lisp based build currently doesn't have the necessary features. It makes
> sense that we use a build process that is reproducible by developers, by
> adding some verification steps to build.xml, so we can all test the results.
>
> From examining 'build.xml' (i.e. without testing) it appears that using
> these source targets on Java5 will falsely include the
> 'META-INF/services/javax.script.ScriptEngineFactory' in the JAR even when
> compiling in the absence of JSR-223 support.  So, I think the abcl-src-0.15
> release was made with Java5, which would explain this behavior.
>
> If we can confirm that using a JSR-223 enabled abcl.jar doesn't cause any
> problems running in Java5 without JSR-223 classes present, we can just ship
> these classes with future releases.  I think the references to JSR-223 from
> the org.armedbear.lisp package are all soft (i.e. there are no direct
> references in Java), so there should actually be nothing that breaks Java5
> with such a release such as "Class not found errors" as long as nothing
> tries to use the JSR-223 code.  We have to test this, and maybe Alessio can
> give some feedback.

Using a JSR-223 enabled abcl.jar with Java 5 cannot possibly cause any
problem, because all the JSR-223 code is self-contained and never
called by the rest of abcl, in fact it is a kind of wrapper around
Interpreter and other abcl classes. You will have errors only if you
try to instantiate one of the JSR-223 classes.

> We should probably then
>
> a) fix 'build.xml' to not include any scripting artifacts when compiled with
> java5 in the absence of JSR-223

Right, I can do that. I wasn't aware that build.xml was used for
releases too when I added JSR-223 to it.

> b) change the source archive targets to complain if Java6 is not used to
> make a release
>
> c) use Java6 to make a release
>
> d) Test that this release works in both Java5/Java6

Ok. I'll do all this and make some tests. Independent testing by
someone else would be useful, I think.
Does the 0.15 release lie in its own branch? If not, how can we
backport the changes to build.xml to it?

Bye,
Alessio