The Final Bugs
We're within weeks of a final JRuby 1.0. We've pared down the bugs that we think we can or must fix for 1.0 and this email is a summary of the ones we need help with. So whatever time you can spare, please have a look and help resolve these.
In order of decreasing priority in JIRA:
JRUBY-820: Net::HTTP.get behaves differently form MRI, failing to get UTF8 properly
-and-
JRUBY-828: UTF-8 regular expressions aren't working
I believe these are both largely the same problem, and it's probably the most visible remaining bug we need to fix. Regular expressions in JRuby currently do not work well with unicode strings, both as incoming match strings and as the regular expression strings themselves. REXML uses /u regular expressions, which is why I believe these issues are closely related. Wes Nakamura has commented that he's looking into 828, but more eyes will help ensure this is fixed.
I believe these are true blocking bugs for 1.0, and I'm not comfortable doing a release if they are not resolved.
JRUBY-971: Make it clear which Java method maps to each equality method
I think we have subtle equality bugs remaining largely because we don't use a consistent naming convention for the Java implementations of Ruby methods like ==, ===, eql? and so on. We should make a quick sweep through the system and make sure all core JRuby code is using the same Java method names for all of these, and binding them in the same way. Note: This is actually the cause of some set_trace_func bugs, since the default === impl should actually invoke ==, causing trace events for both.
JRUBY-969: Add rake and rspec to standard JRuby distribution for 1.0
We have decided to ship both Rake and RSpec with JRuby 1.0, since they are both well-accepted and widely used (moreso for Rake, but RSpec has gained a lot of acceptance the past year). But the mechanism of including them is unclear. I do not want to commit installed gems to SVN; I would prefer to just install them as needed for testing and when building the JRuby distribution. Thoughts?
JRUBY-672: java.lang.Class representation of Ruby class not retrievable
This bug is basically just looking for a way to get at the actual java.lang.Class representing a Ruby-based extension of a Java class. There may have been an API added with Bill's work, or this could be simple to add.
JRUBY-914: JRuby's BigDecimal needs to round
Stu submitted a patch for this, but it unfortunately depends on behavior only present in Java 5 and higher. Since most of us are pretty unfamiliar with BigDecimal, we don't know of a good workaround to support it correctly in Java 1.4.
JRUBY-822: jruby fails to report process exit status correctly
I think Nick may have a grip on this one, but if anyone can offer suggestions as to why the exit codes are apparently shifted in this way, please let us know.
JRUBY-966: Various issues with LocalJumpError not being created early enough
-and-
JRUBY-767: next in an eval should produce a local jump error
These are likely going to be up to Tom and I since they involve pretty deep runtime/interpreter work. But we're also looking for any remaining known issues with LocalJumpError/JumpException that are still out there. I believe we've fixed all such externally-reported issues at the moment.
JRUBY-888: Make regular distro/build create the all-in-one jar by default
We waffle back and forth on this. What's the answer? An all-in-one jar by default, or on request?
JRUBY-873: ant test thread tests sometimes run forever
I managed to get a trace on this one. It appears that some of the tests cause a deadlock between stopping a thread and other operations. But I don't believe anyone's seen it in normal execution yet (or at least nobody's reported it). I'm probably the only one familiar enough with the threading subsystem to fix it, but I'd like to know if anyone's seen other issues.
JRUBY-98: allow "/" as absolute path in Windows
-and-
JRUBY-36: Dir['...'] incompatibilities between Ruby and accross platforms
-and-
JRUBY-61: IO CRLF compatibility with cruby on Windows
-and-
JRUBY-644: Windows line delimiter (\r\n) cause position errors
These blasted Windows pathing and newline bugs just seem to hang on forever. Nobody wants to fix them. There must be someone out there that can help resolve these, yes?
JRUBY-884: Create and consolidate extension and non-standard options
There are a number of configuration options for JRuby. Some have their own flags, like -O to disable ObjectSpace and -C to force compilation of a target script. But many others are only configurable via Java system properties. What we really could use from the community is some idea which settings are worth adding special flags for. We can handle the rest. My personal opinion is that the new -J flag that allows passing flags to the JVM is actually enough.
By my estimation, the rest of the bugs are either almost done or are trivial enough they could be punted to a post 1.0 release. But if we can get these issues knocked down soon (starting with those top couple), 1.0 is going to be an extremely solid release.
In order of decreasing priority in JIRA:
JRUBY-820: Net::HTTP.get behaves differently form MRI, failing to get UTF8 properly
-and-
JRUBY-828: UTF-8 regular expressions aren't working
I believe these are both largely the same problem, and it's probably the most visible remaining bug we need to fix. Regular expressions in JRuby currently do not work well with unicode strings, both as incoming match strings and as the regular expression strings themselves. REXML uses /u regular expressions, which is why I believe these issues are closely related. Wes Nakamura has commented that he's looking into 828, but more eyes will help ensure this is fixed.
I believe these are true blocking bugs for 1.0, and I'm not comfortable doing a release if they are not resolved.
JRUBY-971: Make it clear which Java method maps to each equality method
I think we have subtle equality bugs remaining largely because we don't use a consistent naming convention for the Java implementations of Ruby methods like ==, ===, eql? and so on. We should make a quick sweep through the system and make sure all core JRuby code is using the same Java method names for all of these, and binding them in the same way. Note: This is actually the cause of some set_trace_func bugs, since the default === impl should actually invoke ==, causing trace events for both.
JRUBY-969: Add rake and rspec to standard JRuby distribution for 1.0
We have decided to ship both Rake and RSpec with JRuby 1.0, since they are both well-accepted and widely used (moreso for Rake, but RSpec has gained a lot of acceptance the past year). But the mechanism of including them is unclear. I do not want to commit installed gems to SVN; I would prefer to just install them as needed for testing and when building the JRuby distribution. Thoughts?
JRUBY-672: java.lang.Class representation of Ruby class not retrievable
This bug is basically just looking for a way to get at the actual java.lang.Class representing a Ruby-based extension of a Java class. There may have been an API added with Bill's work, or this could be simple to add.
JRUBY-914: JRuby's BigDecimal needs to round
Stu submitted a patch for this, but it unfortunately depends on behavior only present in Java 5 and higher. Since most of us are pretty unfamiliar with BigDecimal, we don't know of a good workaround to support it correctly in Java 1.4.
JRUBY-822: jruby fails to report process exit status correctly
I think Nick may have a grip on this one, but if anyone can offer suggestions as to why the exit codes are apparently shifted in this way, please let us know.
JRUBY-966: Various issues with LocalJumpError not being created early enough
-and-
JRUBY-767: next in an eval should produce a local jump error
These are likely going to be up to Tom and I since they involve pretty deep runtime/interpreter work. But we're also looking for any remaining known issues with LocalJumpError/JumpException that are still out there. I believe we've fixed all such externally-reported issues at the moment.
JRUBY-888: Make regular distro/build create the all-in-one jar by default
We waffle back and forth on this. What's the answer? An all-in-one jar by default, or on request?
JRUBY-873: ant test thread tests sometimes run forever
I managed to get a trace on this one. It appears that some of the tests cause a deadlock between stopping a thread and other operations. But I don't believe anyone's seen it in normal execution yet (or at least nobody's reported it). I'm probably the only one familiar enough with the threading subsystem to fix it, but I'd like to know if anyone's seen other issues.
JRUBY-98: allow "/" as absolute path in Windows
-and-
JRUBY-36: Dir['...'] incompatibilities between Ruby and accross platforms
-and-
JRUBY-61: IO CRLF compatibility with cruby on Windows
-and-
JRUBY-644: Windows line delimiter (\r\n) cause position errors
These blasted Windows pathing and newline bugs just seem to hang on forever. Nobody wants to fix them. There must be someone out there that can help resolve these, yes?
JRUBY-884: Create and consolidate extension and non-standard options
There are a number of configuration options for JRuby. Some have their own flags, like -O to disable ObjectSpace and -C to force compilation of a target script. But many others are only configurable via Java system properties. What we really could use from the community is some idea which settings are worth adding special flags for. We can handle the rest. My personal opinion is that the new -J flag that allows passing flags to the JVM is actually enough.
By my estimation, the rest of the bugs are either almost done or are trivial enough they could be punted to a post 1.0 release. But if we can get these issues knocked down soon (starting with those top couple), 1.0 is going to be an extremely solid release.
Written on May 22, 2007