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[Andrew Dinn]

Hi Alan/Rory,

On 05/01/15 12:16, Alan Bateman wrote:
>> . . .
> If it's the JDK image then this should work as it's the equivalent of
> pre jdk9-b41 with tools.jar on the class path. So I think you will have
> to dig into, my only guess at this point is that TestNG is somehow
> delegating to the extension class loader rather than the
> system/application class loader.

I have debugged this and the problem is indeed to do with faulty
delegation - on the part of maven [naturlich :-]. Details are provided
below. In summary, the problem can be fixed by configuring maven to stop
dorking around with class loading. I'll be posting a new Byteman
micro-release in the next week which can build and run correctly with
all of JDK6/7/8/9. I'll announce details on this list when it is ready.

regards,

Andrew Dinn
-----------
Senior Principal Software Engineer
Red Hat UK Ltd
Registered in UK and Wales under Company Registration No. 3798903
Directors: Michael Cunningham (USA), Matt Parson (USA), Charlie Peters
(USA), Michael O'Neill (Ireland)

----- 8< -------- 8< -------- 8< -------- 8< -------- 8< -------- 8< ---

The maven surefire plugin provides a boolean configuration property
(childDelegation=true/false) which controls the behaviour of its loader
implementation, class IsolatedClassLoader. The property configures
loading to proceed either by normal parent delegation
(childDelegation=true [sic]) or by means of a URL loader which first
tries to use the bootstrap loader and then does a file lookup over  each
path element of the classpath (childDelegation=false).

[Yes, I know the property name is bizarrely counter-intuitive but then
this is maven %-].

Of course, being maven, it also defaults this configuration switch to
false . . . which means that parent delegation as expected by the JDK9
module setup is bypassed. This rather dirty maven trick works ok for
Byteman using JDK 6, 7 and 8 because with those versions the pom
finagles tools.jar into the classpath as a runtime dependency. Of
course, with 9 I had to disable that dependency so parent delegation is
the only way to get the missing classes. If the pom configures tests to
be run with childDelegation=true then things still work ok.