[icedtea-web] RFC: PR804

[Jon VanAlten]

----- Original Message -----
> From: "Omair Majid" <omajid at redhat.com>
> To: "IcedTea" <distro-pkg-dev at openjdk.java.net>
> Sent: Thursday, October 20, 2011 3:00:19 PM
> Subject: Re: [icedtea-web] RFC: PR804
> 
> On 10/18/2011 10:01 PM, Dr Andrew John Hughes wrote:
> > On 18:05 Tue 18 Oct     , Omair Majid wrote:
> >> Hi,
> >>
> >> The attached patch fixes PR804, which is a bug in the javaws
> >> launcher.
> >> The launcher was eating up spaces in arguments, which caused
> >> problems
> >> when javaws was used to run jnlp files which included spaces. The
> >> fix
> >> uses bash arrays to hold and build the command to execute to
> >> ensure that
> >> spaces are handled correctly.
> >>
> >> Please note that this switches the interpreter used in javaws from
> >> sh to
> >> bash.
> >>
> >> I would like to push this to HEAD and backport it to 1.1 as well.
> >>
> >> ChangeLog:
> >> 2011-10-18  Omair Majid<omajid at redhat.com>
> >>
> >>     * launcher/javaws.in: Use bash arrays to store and join the
> >>     various
> >>     arguments to ensure spaces are handled correctly.
> >>
> >> Any thoughts or concerns?
> >>
> >> Cheers,
> >> Omair
> >
> > I don't see a huge problem, but I do wonder if a less disruptive
> > solution might be to improve the option parser in IcedTea-Web
> > itself:
> 
> That is an interesting approach. I am just afraid of going down this
> path because it makes icedtea-web different from every other program
> in
> terms of how it looks at its arguments.
> 

+1.  Please do keep this logic in a launcher.

<SNIP>

> 
> > BTW, these issues with quoting are why we now use Perl for the
> > javac.in
> > in IcedTea and probably why Oracle have binary launchers...
> 
> Ah, I wasnt aware of the reason perl was being used for javac.in. I
> suppose I can rewrite the javaws launcher in perl too, but I would
> rather stick with bash if possible.
> 

I think it would be ideal to be as consistent as possible in terms of
language used for launchers in IcedTea projects.  But, if you are not
prepared to do a rewrite at this time, I think the current fix seems
okay.

cheers,
jon