Re: RFC: An alternative to /usr/share/java/repository
"Ean R . Schuessler" wrote:
> The best advice is perhaps to follow what policy actually states as
> the technique for dealing with programs that require an environment
> setting, a wrapper script. It is fairly trivial (1 line of shell code)
> to read in a list of configured classpaths from a folder in /etc and
> use these to build a classpath for the VM being spawned.
This solution is certainly not perfect but I would prefer it over
/usr/share/java/repository.
One problem that this solution has is that the classpath might get really
long (when there are many installed packages) and so the time the
classloader takes to load a new class will be very long. It takes a lot
longer to look into several jar or zip archives than to search in a
directory (like the shell's command path does).
I think the core classes to each JVM should be handled in separate files
like /etc/jdk1.1/classpath, /etc/kaffe/classpath and then using alternatives
for /etc/classpath.d/00core (or 99core?) for e.g. jikes.
> The shell script would do the proper expansion when calling the VM.
> This would allow you to customize the classpath and still get the
> benefits of dynamic jar inclusion.
Right. Most JVMs already need a wrapper script (e.g. to find a shared
library which provied native/green threads or a JIT) so we won't lose a
lot here.
> I am considering putting it into the kaffe package in some form whether
> it is adopted on a wider basis or not.
Please do so. We than can then test this scheme and maybe find a better one
if it's not good enough. Just discussing without an existing implementaion
doesn't buy us much.
> I frankly don't intend to follow the current Java policy as it stands
> because I simply don't think that it is the right way to solve the
> problem.
While we are at it: I already expressed my dislike for the naming scheme
in the policy (lib-X-java) which is taken from C libraries. I propose to
use the scheme from Phyton instead (java-X). What do other people think
about this?
Now that the freeze has been rescheduled we have enough time to discuss
all these topics before the potato release.
--
Stefan Gybas
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