Is com.sun.org.apache same as org.apache package? - apache

I mean, can I use the com.sun.org.apache (all subpackages) classes as I use they from org.apache (in any Apache lib)?
Will the OpenJDK maintain this package up to date with apache updates?
And the JDK7 will maintain this package?
Where can I find information about that?

It is a very bad idea to use it. Once upon a time, Sun took a copy of Xerces, chock full of bugs. They made some changes. Perhaps they subtracted some bugs. We know that there are many very serious bugs that they did not subtract.
And they renamed it to com.sun.... for one reason: to tell you not to use it. At any time, in any point release, in any patch, they can change those classes incompatibly or remove them.
Further, these classes may not be in IBM's copy of the JRE, or Apple's, or (haha) Microsoft's, or JRocket.
If you want Xerces, use Xerces. To find information about this, read the Xerces-j mailing list archive for many stern warnings from the Xerces developers about the version forked by Sun.
The fact that the classes are formally 'public' means nothing except that Sun needed to be able to new them from some other package.

Err I wouldn't, just based on the fact that they're internal classes and there is a risk of them changing over time. Use the org.apache classes instead.
No idea about the intentions with keeping them up to date, maybe try posting a message on the openjdk forum:
http://mail.openjdk.java.net/mailman/listinfo

My understanding is that this is a fork of the apache code. At one point they were the same, but no more. So you can't count on the same bug fixes being present in both versions.

If documentation for this package says that it is public, then it's OK to use.
Otherwise they can pool a floor underneath you when they decide not to support it in the future.
Usually, you should not rely on anything other than java and javax in JDK.

Related

Unable to derive module descriptor for legacy signed JAR

I'm trying to update a software system to JDK-11 using modules, and everything was going just fine right up until I slammed head-on into the aforementioned issue.
I have a legacy signed JAR that I need to incorporate for interaction with legacy systems. There's no way to update the JAR and no way to get a new version. The JAR must be signed in order to be usable (the whole "trusted code" deal and whatnot). The problem is that the JAR contains classes in the unnamed (root) package. Yeah. Stupid. Bad practice. Blablabla. It's still there, and I still need to use it.
I've not found any documentation or answers anywhere that would remotely suggest that what I need is possible. In fact, the opposite is true: everyone is adamant that in the "new"(ish) module system, no class may reside in the unnamed package.
Needless to say I'm unable to both modify the contents of the JAR, or get at the sources to render a new one - that's without even considering the issue of the signature...
That said: I refuse to believe the folks at Oracle would leave such a glaring oversight with regards to legacy code. As we all know, a lot of the time we have no choice but to use it for legitimate reasons, and we can't do anything to fix/update/refactor/etc... I would have hoped there was a mechanism added to the module system to support this, albeit for extreme cases only, etc...etc...
Disclaimer: I do fully understand why this isn't meant to be supported. What I'm having a hard time with is the lack of a workaround...
Thanks!
I've already tried:
creating a facade module that transitively adds the offending module (obviously no dice, same problem)
unpacking-and-repacking the module while temporarily disabling signature validation in a test env (fails because the class is apparently referenced within many other, properly-organized classes)
finding an updated module (no luck here, either)
beheading a chicken and roasting it over a pentagram while invoking the aid of ancient pagan gods (tasty, but didn't fix it)
curling up in a ball under my desk and weeping until execution succeeds (that's where I'm typing this from)...

How can a modified Julia package be used natively?

So, there is this cool package I've found but it leaves a lot to be desired. Since it made more sense to modify it, rather than build a new one myself, I changed the code in the corresponding source directory (C:\Users[my username].julia\v0.4[package name]\src). I made sure to modify not just the base.jl file, but also the [name of package].jl one so that there are no issues with dependencies or the new functions I added. I tried running the package several times to ensure that Julia doesn't spit out any errors or exceptions (the original package had some deprecated stuff, which I also remedied). Still, I fail to use the additional functionality of the package that I augmented. Any help would be greatly appreciated.
I'm using Julia ver 0.4.2, on a Windows 7 machine. As an IDE I use Notepad++. Thanks
I'm not exactly sure what you tried, but here's a guess as to what's going on: if you've already loaded the package in your julia session, edits to the source files won't take effect unless you explicitly reload the package. There are some good workflow tips here, and more explanation of the module system here.
However, for a newbie the easiest thing might be to quit julia and restart.
As far as making changes to a package, as Gnumic commented, your best approach is to make a branch and commit your changes there. Once you become convinced your changes represent an improvement, consider sharing your changes with the rest of the world.

How to break a maven build when dependencies are out of date?

I love the maven-versions-plugin but sometimes I forget to run it for a while. Is there a way to make a maven build fail (and thus have a continuous build fail) when certain important dependencies are out of date?
I think you're approaching this incorrectly. Mail yourself the output of the maven-versions-plugin if you want, but don't fail the build due to changes outside of your control.
Even more, why would you want to needlessly update to the latest versions? I have seen many tricky problems appear due to upgrades which have brought slight changes to previous behaviour.
This, in general, is a bad practice - to update versions automatically. There is no practical reason of using the latest version of any package. If the library you're using satisfies your requirements you should stay with this version for security/stability reasons. And forever.
I think that maven-versions-plugin is an anti-pattern itself.
ps. When and if you want to do integration testing of modules developed by different teams/programmers, it is "integration testing". Even in this case I still think that on-fly version updating is the wrong approach. Root project should not do this integration testing, instead, every sub-module (or JAR, in your case), has to be responsible for integration testing of itself together with the rest of the system. When a sub-module increases its version it has to validate whether everything is still fine, and only then has to release a new version to the repository. And when the sub-module is doing the validation it has to be dependent on statically specified version numbers.

Design principles as to how linux repository managers update themselves?

I know there are other applications also, but considering yum/apt-get/aptitude/pacman are you core package managers for linux distributions.
Today I saw on my fedora 13 box:
(7/7): yum-3.2.28-4.fc13_3.2.28-5.fc13.noarch.drpm | 42 kB 00:00
And I started to wonder how does such a package update itself? What design is needed to ensure a program can update itself?
Perhaps this question is too general but I felt SO was more appropriate than programmers.SE for such a question being that it is more technical in nature. If there is a more appropriate place for this question feel free to let me know and I can close or a moderator can move.
Thanks.
I've no idea how those particular systems work, but...
Modern unix systems will generally tolerate overwriting a running executable without a hiccup, so in theory you could just do it.
You could do it in a chroot jail and then move or something similar to reduce the time during which the system is vulnerable. Add a journalling filesystem and this is a little safer still.
It occurs to me that the package-manager needs to hold the package access database in memory as well to insure against a race condition there. Again, the chroot jail and copy option is available as a lower risk alternative.
And I started to wonder how does such a package update itself? What
design is needed to ensure a program can update itself?
It's like a lot of things, you don't need to "design" specifically to solve this problem ... but you do need to be aware of certain "gotchas".
For instance Unix helps by reference counting inodes so "you" can delete a file you are still using, and it's fine. However this implies a few things you have to do, for instance if you have plugins then you need to load them all before you run start a transaction ... even if the plugin would only run at the end of the transaction (because you might have a different version at the end).
There are also some things that you need to do to make sure that anything you are updating works, like: Put new files down before removing old files. And don't truncate old files, just unlink. But those also help you :).
Using external problems, which you communicate with, can be tricky (because you can't exec a new copy of the old version after it's been updated). But this isn't often done, and when it is it's for things like downloading ... which can somewhat easily be made to happen before any updates.
There are also things which aren't a concern in the cmd line clients like yum/apt, for instance if you have a program which is going to run 2+ "updates" then you can have problems if the first update was to the package manager. downgrades make this even more fun :).
Also daemon like processes should basically never "load" the package manager, but as with other gotchas ... you tend to want to follow this anyway, for other reasons.

Why's a simple change to rt.jar causing the Java Runtime Environment to crash silently?

This is what I'm doing:
extract contents of my JRE's rt.jar
extract src.zip of my JDK (same version)
Now, if I copy Runtime.java from the extracted src folder and compile it using javac.exe without any modifications and then put it in the extracted rt folder to finally put everything back in a jar file using jar.exe, everything works as expected. The JRE runs fine.
However, if I make the slightest change to Runtime.java and compile it and put it in rt.jar, the JRE crashes whenever I attempt to start it. This is an example of a slight change that causes the silent crash:
/** Don't let anyone else instantiate this class */
private Runtime() {
System.out.println("This is a test.");
}
Instead of:
/** Don't let anyone else instantiate this class */
private Runtime() {}
Could anyone tell me why this is causing my JRE to crash?
Thanks in advance.
It's possible that System.out has not been initialised at the time that the Runtime() constructor runs. Usually console output is not considered a "slight" change, but at the wrong time it can invoke way too much stuff that may not be set up at all yet.
You're doing this all wrong. You can't distribute that modified JRE for a start, so it is only useful inside your organization . Install a SecurityManager and don't grant your codebase any of the RuntimePermissions you're trying to protect against.
#Tom - I advise you NOT to try to do this:
You cannot distribute the modified rt.jar file without violating the Sun binary license.
Even if you did, you would not be allowed to call it Java.
As you are finding, there are lots of complications that arise when you make changes, particularly when those changes might interfere with the JVM's behind the scenes initialization. And when things blow up during initialization, the JVM often cannot report the problem in an intelligible way.
If you do succeed in making the modified rt.jar work for one JRE, there is no guarantee that the same hacks will work for a different version.
Nobody in their right mind would knowingly use a modified JVM (especially one modified by a third-party) in a production app.
EDIT : judging from your other questions, I guess you are trying to reverse engineer or modify some third party Java application with a custom launcher. If you provided more information on what you were really trying to do, we might be able to suggest the right way to do it ... rather than using "desperate measures" such as modifying the JRE.
That's pretty strange, as I did the same trick with many classes in rt.jar in past.
Can you provide us with the crashed process output?