Works just great in quick testing at least.
I'm still waiting for my precompilation script to return to determine whether Jasper still compiles everything it used to (and should have).
Unfortunately, Tomcat 5.0.20 cannot compile 6 out our 985 JSP pages (which Tomcat 5.0.19 compiled just fine).
The issue can be traced directly to a single entry in the change log:
Add some intellignece to the compiler for generating code for useBean action. Generate direct instantiation (use new) when possible, use bean.instantiate when bean name is specified, and for the case of invalid bean class, either issue a translation time error (instead of javac error), or generate codes to throw InstantiationException at runtime, depending on a new compiler switch, errorOnUseBeanInvalidClassAttribute(defaulted to true) (kinman)
There are several issues with this change:
1. The new logic assumes that the bean can be directly instantiated
/at compile time/ and throws a page compilation error when this is
not the case.
* There are beans that can be directly instantiated at run
time but not at compile time (e.g. upon precompilation). This was the case in all 6 of our failures. [Examples as to
when this might occur include requirements for databases
being accessible, other servers running, etc, etc, for
successful bean instantiation.]
* The error occurs in such a way that a partial Java source
file is written, so later attempts to recompile the page
(when the runtime environment is duplicated) also fail
unless the partial Java source file is first deleted.
2. I note the errorOnUseBeanInvalidClassAttribute setting but there
are issues here as well:
* The default value, true, breaks existing code.
* If errorOnUseBeanInvalidClassAttribute is set to false:
o Instantiation of some (e.g. session or application
scope) beans can be time and/or resource consuming. Besides being an invalid test as to whether a bean can
be directly instantiated, instantiating such beans
during compilation can be costly. [The combined time
for precompiling all pages was longer in 5.0.20 with
this behavior in place than when I removed it.]
o The new behavior will cause beans to be instantiated
via Beans.instantiate() rather than directly
instantiated when compile time direct instantiation
fails. This leads to a performance degradation
whenever a bean has a runtime instantiation dependency.
* As best I can tell, errorOnUseBeanInvalidClassAttribute is
not accessible from / exposed via JspC main -- which I use
from my pre-compilation scripts for various reasons.
Due to these issues I have reverted this change in Generator to the 5.0.19 state (leaving the other valuable changes in this class intact). Once I did so all 985 JSP pages compiled -- including the 6 that had previously failed.
I would urge that this change be reverted -- either in this release (or an immediate 5.0.21 release) or immediately changed in HEAD for the next release.
-- Jess Holle
