RFC: Netx - implement -Xclearcache command line option

[Omair Majid]

On 09/30/2010 04:32 PM, Deepak Bhole wrote:
> * Omair Majid<omajid at redhat.com>  [2010-09-30 16:10]:
>> Hi,
>>
>> I posted this patch way back in 2009, but it looks like it got lost/ignored.
>>

Ok, turns out it was my fault: just noticed 
http://mail.openjdk.java.net/pipermail/distro-pkg-dev/2009-August/006666.html. 
Somehow it slipped off my radar.

>> On 07/30/2009 05:18 PM, Omair Majid wrote:
>>> The attached patch adds the option -Xclearcache to Netx.
>>>
>>
>> Which (and I neglected to explain this last time) makes javaws clean
>> out its cache by deleting the contents of ~/.netx/cache/
>>
>
> Hmm, what happens if I have another netx app running and javaws is called
> with -Xclearcache? AFAIK the code has no provisioning to detect if a
> cache file has been deleted, and to re-download it... does it?
>

As far as I can tell, very bad things (not eating babies kind of bad, 
but still...). Depending on the exact timing either the VM will crash or 
a java Exception might be thrown. If the JVM has opened the (missing) 
jar earlier and and wants to open it again to load additional classes 
the VM will most probably crash. Otherwise javaws simply wont be able to 
find the needed jar and will fail to start.

I suppose I could make some sort of global application lock to stop any 
other javaws instances from starting while -Xclearcache is running and 
to make sure -Xclearcache does not start if any other javaws 
applications are running.

Thanks,
Omair