In order to find an appropriate solution to this issue, I'd like to identify the different problems that we need to address. Version: What does a version number mean? I'll make a proposal for how to use minor/major version number to have a basis on which we can identify the issues. Major version numbers indicate that some public API methods have been changed in semantics or have been removed. So an application using component-1.x might not work with component-2.x Minor version numbers indicate that the component remains backward compatible, but new methods may have been introduced. So an application using component-1.x will work with component-1.y if y>0, but an application component-1.y might fail when using component 1.x A build number might indicate that private methods have changed without affecting the public api. So an application using component 1.x.a will work with component 1.x.b and an application using 1.x.b will work with component 1.x.a Does this sound reasonable? Missed something?
Have you seen the guidelines in use by the Apache APR project? It looks to me like you're basically advocating the same system they have in place. It might save us hassle to just adopt their version numbering system whole-sale (as the Spring Acegi Security subsystem does)
http://apr.apache.org/versioning.html
I'd prefer to keep the "jar" naming as introducing "assembly" would cause some confusion. If anyone would be interested I could put a simple proposal to the sandbox.
Good point, JAR may be a better name. I see two benefits to using "assembly" or "assembler" as the name:
- Clearly indicates that you aren't dealing with plain-old-JAR files anymore
- Parallels name used in .NET so that the analogy is directly obvious
This approach will not address the trouble that may be caused by applications not using this package. So finally I think that it is required that this feature (or something comparable) will make it into Java 1.6. Up to then I still think it's a very simple but easy way to add the version number to the package names to avoid at least the very big problems concerning incompatible jars in the same classloader.
I understand your reasoning behind putting this code in Java 1.6, but I think we can do this without a new release of the Java language (see below). If our ideas are successful, this new Commons component could always migrate later to a JSR proposal, as Doug Lea's concurrent package did.
With regards to problems caused by components that aren't using this new package, I'm thinking that as long as the component does not make any Class.forName calls, we should be OK. If there are Class.forName calls, the component may still be able to work, but we would strongly encourage a migration to using Assembly.getType or whatever. This entails the component introducing a dependency on Assembler, which means the Assembler API will need to maintain backwards compatability as much as possible (e.g. - imagine the nightmare that would ensue if java.util.Vector were to change its semantics!)
Regards, Daniel
Matt
-----Ursprüngliche Nachricht----- Von: [EMAIL PROTECTED] [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] Im Auftrag von Matt Sgarlata Gesendet: Dienstag, 21. Dezember 2004 13:04 An: commons-dev@jakarta.apache.org Betreff: Re: AW: AW: [proposal] avoiding jar version nightmares
Chris Lambrou wrote:
Matt Sgarlata wrote:
Does this mean .NET doesn't have reflection? That's such a killer feature of Java; I can't believe they wouldn't have ported it to .NET. Any .NET developers out there that can tell us how .NET deals with reflection when you have multiple versions of the same class?
Since the class name alone is insufficient to fully identify a specific version of a class, to my knowledge there is no equivalent to Class.forName(String classname) in .NET. Instead, .NET has the Assembly class. An Assembly is roughly akin to a java jar file, and is typically a single DLL that contains one or more classes. Assembly has a non-static getType(String typeName) method, that performs the same job as the static Class.forName(String classname) method in java, but for a specific Assembly instance. There is never any ambiguity over which version of the named Type that is returned, since an Assembly can only contain one version of any given class. Support for multiple versions of a class at runtime is achieved by storing those multiple class versions in separate Assemblies.
Thanks for the info, Chris! This definitely sounds like a good approach. Now my question is, can we simulate this in a new commons component? :)
Here are the steps I would imagine to be involved: 1) Define our own JAR sub-type to mirror the .NET assembly notion. Include some type of a plain-text file that describes the versions of the software required to perform certain tasks. It would be nice to do this in an existing structure like MANIFEST.MF, but I don't know... are you allowed to add arbitrary information to that file? In any case, we wouldn't use the existing dependency descriptors because that would prevent multiple versions of the same class from being loaded. 2) Call org.apache.commons.assembler.Assembler.getType(String assembledPackage, String className). The Assembler would then go to the assemblyPackage path on the classpath and search the plain-text file from step #1 which would list the versions of classes that are required by the given assembledPackage. For example, if assembledPackage was the Digester, which required collections 3, the assembledPackage would be org.apache.commons.digester. A dynamic proxy or generated bytecode would be loaded that fulfilled the given contract and that would be returned to the client. Any existing code that is just calling Class.forName would have classes looked up in the normal way, so we would need to make sure that this dynamic proxy doesn't get loaded into the JVM in the same way as Class.forName (this is where the dynamic proxy and/or bytecode generation comes in)
What do you guys think? Does this sound feasible? I'd rather spin this as a commons component than a J2SE 1.6 enhancement request, because the later will take years to come to fruition.
Chris
Matt
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