[kepler-dev] what's the deal with org.kepler.loader.InitClassPath?

Dan Higgins higgins at nceas.ucsb.edu
Wed Oct 29 12:02:43 PDT 2008


Hi All,
    As Christoper noted, Jython was originally removed from Kepler due 
to its helping to make Kepler startup very slow. That problem was fixed 
and the base part of Jython is in Kepler 1.0 so that the Python actors 
from Ptolemy will run in Kepler. Note that it was fixed in Kepler by 
changing startup so that actors are instantiated when actually used.
    It would be nice to have all possible Jython classes available if 
the startup problem can be avoided. However, the number of 
users/developers that actually want to use Jython had not been very 
large in the past; maybe the demand has increased.
    Note also that in previous version of Kepler, we tried to avoid 
using environment variables for setting paths, primarily because we ran 
into a number of potential users (not developers!) (especially on 
Windows) who don't have a clue as to what an environment variable is and 
how to set it! (Similarly, many users don't know what ant is, don't have 
it installed, or know how to use it.) So if we add more pieces to the 
jython installation, we do need to consider how to make its use as easy 
as possible.

Dan Higgins

Christopher Brooks wrote:
> Hi Chad,
>
> BTW - one reason that Jython was removed was because it wanted to
> traverse the entire classpath and create cache files of all the
> jars.  This made Kepler's start up time very slow.
> This has probably been addressed because Kepler should no longer
> be instantiating every actor at start up.  However, this is
> something to watch for, these issues have a way of coming back.
>
> The full version of Jython was fairly large, which is why Ptolemy
> includes only a portion of it.  A separate module for Jython
> would mean that all of Jython could be made available.
>
> The Jython developement effort was on hold for a few years, but
> there was some activity within the last year or so.
>
> _Christopher
>
> Chad Berkley wrote:
>> Hi Tristan,
>>
>> I think this class is there so that the classpath can be amended to 
>> allow for different versions of the same class in different jars.  I 
>> think Dan Crawl last worked on it, so I'll let him explain more.  I 
>> think it's a bug that it finds files in the .svn directories.  They 
>> should probably be explicitly excluded from the search as we will 
>> never want anything in those directories in the classpath.
>>
>> We have plans to overhaul this system sometime in the next year when 
>> we start re-architecting the core of kepler.
>>
>> As for including all of jython in kepler, I don't have a problem with 
>> that as long as it isn't 20 MB of jar files or something huge like 
>> that.  We're in the process of breaking kepler up into modules which 
>> will be built by a single build system.  A Jython module would 
>> probably be a nice addition to kepler.  I'm hoping to have the new 
>> directory structure for the modules sorted out in the next week or so 
>> and I'm almost at a point where I can check in the changes that I've 
>> made to split the core of kepler away from other functionality.  
>> Needless to say, there are some pretty large changes coming to Kepler 
>> in the next couple weeks. You might want to wait just a bit until we 
>> get this new system in place before adding Jython.  We'll make an 
>> announcement to the community when everything is ready to go.
>>
>> thanks,
>> chad
>>
>>
>> Tristan King wrote:
>>> I've been messing around with kepler's jython support recently 
>>> trying to get kepler to use my system's jython install rather than 
>>> the jython.jar included with kepler and run into an interesting 
>>> problem.
>>>
>>> The InitClassPath class recursively goes through the lib/jar/ 
>>> directory and adds anything it finds to the classpath. This includes 
>>> the .svn/**/*.jar.svn-base files. Thus, even if i overwrite the 
>>> lib/jar/jython.jar file, the 
>>> lib/jar/.svn/prop-base/jython.jar.svn-base file is found and added 
>>> to the classpath, and since . comes before j, the .svn/ version of 
>>> jython.jar takes precedence in the classpath. I haven't tested this, 
>>> but assume that this would effect any other files in the lib/jar/ 
>>> directory. If you try and update a library, you wont be able to test 
>>> it until you check the file into svn, which overwrites the stored 
>>> .svn version of the file.
>>>
>>> Is there any advantage to the InitClassPath class other than 
>>> removing the need to write out the classpath manually in release 
>>> builds? Because I can't see one, and I don't think the 
>>> aforementioned reason is a good reason for trying to build something 
>>> that ant provides already, and does right!
>>>
>>> -- 
>>> Tristan King
>>> Research Officer,
>>> eResearch Centre
>>> James Cook University, Townsville Qld 4811
>>> Australia
>>>
>>> Phone: +61747816902
>>> E-mail: tristan.king at jcu.edu.au <mailto:tristan.king at jcu.edu.au> 
>>> www: http://eresearch.jcu.edu.au
>>>
>>>
>>> ------------------------------------------------------------------------ 
>>>
>>>
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