Making the source code utf-8

[Naoto Sato]

This sounds like a reasonable request. +1

Naoto

On 2/7/23 4:28 AM, Magnus Ihse Bursie wrote:
> Currently, the source code in the JDK is in an ill-defined encoding. 
> There is no official declaration of the encoding used. It is "mostly 
> ASCII", but the relatively few non-ASCII characters used are not 
> well-defined. In many cases, it is latin-1, but I am pretty certain 
> other encodings are used for e.g. Asian translations.
> 
> This is is creating unnecessary problems when working with the JDK code 
> base, while providing no benefit. We ended up here not by choice, but by 
> historical accident. Most recently, this issue has surfaced in 
> JDK-8301853, JDK-8301854 and JDK-8301855, but there has popped up issues 
> relating to this from time to time, e.g. JDK-8263028.
> 
> As JEP 400[1] confirms, UTF-8 is the way to go. We should follow up on 
> this by converting our code base to UTF-8.
> 
> I have created JDK-8301971[2] with the intention of converting all files 
> to UTF-8, and updating all infrastructure to recognize this fact.
> 
> Even though 99.9% of all text in the JDK repository is ASCII only, with 
> a code base the size of the JDK there are of course many, many instances 
> that needs to be checked and/or converted. I can take care of the 
> overarching issues, like updating compiler flags and develop tooling to 
> detect, and try to convert non-ASCII files based on my best guesses, but 
> in the end, there are likely to be many files which needs to be verified 
> by their respective teams, so that I did not assume the incorrect source 
> encoding.
> 
> So, before I go ahead and start doing this, I want to check:
> 
> * Is everyone onboard with this idea? I do assume that in 2023, having 
> UTF-8 encoding for text files is (or should be) a no-brainer, but I want 
> to verify that there is no-one opposing this.
> 
> * Should I open a JEP for this? On the one hand, it is likely to require 
> a non-trivial amount of work, but on the other hand, there is no change 
> visible for the end user, so it will be kind of pointless to announce. 
> For my part, I could go either way, so I'm interested in hearing 
> opinions, preferably with good rationales, for one way or the other.
> 
> /Magnus
> 
> [1] https://openjdk.org/jeps/400
> [2] https://bugs.openjdk.org/browse/JDK-8301971
> 
>