The implication of the JDK-8194154 fix in jdk8u342.

[Sergey Bylokhov]

We at Amazon decided to do a respin of our JDK 8 to revert the fix for 8194154.
I have created the jbs bug to track the current issue: https://bugs.openjdk.org/browse/JDK-8290832
if the community agrees to fix it in the OpenJDK repo I can propose the PR.


On 7/20/22 13:27, Sergey Bylokhov wrote:
> Hello, the last release of jdk8u includes the fix for JDK-8194154[1] which disabled the possibility 
> to change the "user.dir" property.
> 
> Changing the "user.dir" was not recommended from the beginning but it was not forbidden, so there 
> are some old applications that rely on the old behavior. One of the app which sets the "user.dir" is 
> Gradle. The Gradle has a notice in the documentation for the user:
> "Never use new File(relative path) because this creates a path relative to the current working 
> directory (CWD). Gradle can make no guarantees about the location of the CWD, which means builds 
> that rely on it may break at any time".
> 
> But for compatibility reasons they still set the "user.dir" property, so the old plugins will work. 
> Now that compatibility is broken due to the fix I mention. We found such apps immediately after the 
> release.
> 
> I would like to ask what was the reason for the backport, is it critical enough to change a 
> behavior? I did not find any broad discussion about that backport nor the reason why it was pushed 
> but I would like to bring a compatibility concerns about that change. I think we should roll it back 
> as soon as possible.
> 
> Please share your opinions?
> 
> [1] https://bugs.openjdk.org/browse/JDK-8194154
> 


-- 
Best regards, Sergey.