Proposal to improve the loading of the abcl-contrib dependency.

[Ralph Ritoch]

Hi,

There is one small correction to the code used for testing.

(in-package :sys)
(add-contrib (make-pathname :defaults (java:jcall "toString" (svref
(java:jcall "getURLs" (boot-classloader)) 0))))

The code I sent in the proposal will not work because the functions from
the sys package are private.

Best Regards,
  Ralph Ritoch

On Sun, Jul 26, 2015 at 8:29 PM, Ralph Ritoch <rritoch at gmail.com> wrote:

> Hi,
>
>    I have run into an issue with making executable abcl jars when the jar
> depends on, and provides, abcl-contrib. As far as I can tell abcl looks for
> abcl-contrib in the following locations.
>
> 1. Looks for a jar named abcl-contrib.jar in the classpath determined by
> probing the classloader for the jars it provides.
> 2. Looks in the directory of the jars in the classpath for a file named
> abcl-contrib.jar
>
> Neither of these solutions work if the currently executing jar includes
> abcl-contrib and isn't named abcl-contrib.jar.
>
> The following code proves that it is relatively easy to add this
> capability.
>
> (in-package 'sys)
> (sys:add-contrib (make-pathname :defaults (java:jcall "toString" (svref
> (java:jcall "getURLs" (sys:boot-classloader)) 0))))
>
> This code properly loads abcl-contrib when the executing jar provides
> abcl-contrib, while (require 'abcl-contrib) does not.
>
> My proposal is to add a file named abcl-contrib/version.lisp to the
> abcl-contrib.jar, possibly in the /META-INF directory to avoid any
> potential conflicts with java, and to have sys:find-contrib look for this
> file in the resources provided by the classpath. The contents of this file
> is not important.
>
> This change makes it possible to include the abcl-contrib "dependency"
> directly inside the jar application that is currently running, regardless
> of the name of the jar file. Therefore, applications which make use of
> abcl-contrib can be distributed as a single jar.
>
> For maven users, this means that their uberjars will work by just
> including abcl and abcl-contrib as dependencies.
>
> For ant users they would probably need to extract abcl-contrib and include
> the extracted files in their generated jar which I believe can be fully
> automated.
>
> It would be relatively easy for me to produce a patch to provide this
> feature as part of ABCL. It may be possible to provide this feature as an
> add-on, but the functions needed within the system package are private (not
> exported) so it would be difficult, if not impossible, to implement this
> feature as an add-on.
>
> I would like your feedback on this issue. If this is a feature you want,
> or if you have any specific objections to including this feature in ABCL,
> please let me know.
>
> Best Regards,
>    Ralph Ritoch
>
>
>
>
>
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