Unicode support in Java VM on Windows

[Heiko Wagner]

Hi,

I am currently investigating on a problem of the Java VM on Windows. The VM
is started using the JNI invocation api. This works unless the path contains
non-ansi characters. So I hacked the classpath with addURLToAppClassLoader()
in sun.misc.Launcher. I at least could make a shared JRE installation,
started from a ansi path, find my JARs. Since one of my JARs does use native
code I then got stuck at the System.loadLibrary() call. Hacking the correct
path into the 'usr_paths' field into the ClassLoader did not help, because
the actual Windows API call LoadLibrary() seems to be ansi flavour instead
of wide char api. Would it be possible to make this two enhancements without
hurting the Java VM spec?:

1) fill the property java.class.path from the env variable CLASSPATH with a
call to GetEnvironmentVariableW instead of GetEnvironmentVariableA to enable
setting the classpath with unicode characters

2) fill the property java.library.path and issue the actual LoadLibrary with
appropriate wide char api

>From a quick look at the VM source I found out, that most string operations
use the ANSI C string functions.
Maybe it would be possible to use UTF-8 encoding to transfer the path
strings throu the Java VM routines to the final Windows API calls, to avoid
large changes in the code base.

Regards
Heiko Wagner