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Re: Release Plans


From: Michael Goffioul
Subject: Re: Release Plans
Date: Mon, 22 Apr 2013 22:23:25 -0400

On Mon, Apr 22, 2013 at 10:02 PM, Mike Miller <address@hidden> wrote:
On Mon, Apr 22, 2013 at 5:13 PM, PhilipNienhuis wrote:
> John W. Eaton wrote
>> <snip>
>>   * Release with Java enabled by default.  The JVM is not loaded
>>     unless it is needed, so having Java enabled by default should not
>>     cause trouble for users unless they actually want to try using
>>     some Java functions.  The only exception is that the dialog
>>     functions attempt to use Java if the Qt versions are not
>>     available, but I think that will be a tiny minority of users.
>
> What trouble do you refer to? Loading of the JVM?
> By supplying a java.opts file with carefully chosen values (sufficiently low
> amount of initial memory, say 16 MB) this issue can be mitigated. Java has a
> sophisticated garbage collector so if methods and objects are unloaded
> properly, JVM memory shouldn't be an issue.

There have been at least three bugs in Octave code not related to Java
that have cropped up since the JVM was added to Octave. One was due to
Java changing the FPU precision and others have been due to changes in
the memory constraints. I don't think it would be a stretch to say
that there may be more that we haven't seen yet.

For the Java experts: Octave currently compiles in the JAVA_HOME path
at build time. This means a user of a binary Octave package has to
have the same version of Java installed in the same directory as the
maintainer who built it, right? Is it possible to compile against the
JNI and load any JRE at run time from JAVA_HOME and test it for
features? In other words, would it be possible to build Octave with
JAVA_HOME=/usr/local/java-1.6.0 and run the resulting Octave binary on
another system with JAVA_HOME=/usr/lib/jvm/java-1.7.0-openjdk-amd64?

If this is possible I think this would be a big win for binary
packagers, especially for Windows users who could have a JRE or JDK
installed anywhere, right?

The problem actually does not occur under (native) Windows. The JRE location is obtained from the Window registry, which is populated by the Java installer.

Michael.


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