[ jEdit-devel ] JCompiler MESS!!!

[Dirk M. <dmo...@gm...>]

Hi developers,

I'm going to give a history lesson now, please skip to the bottom if you
get bored, at the end I'm going to ask you an important question.

JCompiler is a real mess. I spent an evening to find out the features
and differences of the various versions out there, and this was not fun,
I tell you. Here's what I found out:

1. The version in the CVS is called 0.6. Kevin partially implemented
some new features, before he left the project. He changed the package
name from "jcompiler" to "net.sourceforge.jedit.jcompiler", switched
from jmk to Ant (he needed to include a new version of Ant for some new
features he used), and began with the implementation of a
StackTraceParser:

The StackTraceParser was meant to be used on compilation and runtime
stack traces. The user should be able to double click on a line in the
stack trace. JCompiler would try to find the source file and jump to the
specific line. If the source could not be found, only a class file,
JCompiler would try to decompile the class "on the fly" and show the
generated source code. This was planned, but Kevin got only half way
through.

The CVS version needs Kevin's PluginHolder 0.0.5 (the version from
Plugin Central) and the CVS version of BuildTools, which he called
0.0.12. 

I got it running, but it doesn't work: it does not compile anything. I
don't know why, but I didn't check thoroughly.


2. Dominic Stolerman made some extensions and bugfixes on the last
"official" JCompiler release 0.4.8 and called it 0.4.9. Kevin accused
Dominic of forking the developement, and Mike decided to wait with the
release on Plugin Central until the differences were sorted out.
Unfortunately they never were. So now we got this two versions.

Among other things, Dominic updated JCompiler to the new OptionPane API,
gives warnings about missing tools.jar, removed StaticLogger references
and the default shortcuts (S+F6 etc.). JCompiler 0.4.9 has the simple
package name "jcompiler".

This version works with PluginHolder-0.0.5 and BuildTools-0.0.9, both
available from Plugin Central.

Btw.: BuildTools-0.0.9 lives in the package "buildtools.*", while 0.0.12
lives in "net.sourceforge.jedit.buildtools.*". The difference between
them is that 0.0.12 has some preliminary support for decompilation and
parsing stack traces (not much, AFAICT).


Why am I telling you all this?

Because I'm going to propose that I discard Kevin's version and work on
Dominic's. 

Not because I don't like Kevin's code (I do!), but because Dominic's
version is closer to what I have in mind, and it is closer to
maintainability. I don't think Kevin introduced anything essential in
his new version. The StackTraceParser should go into a different plugin,
probably Project Management, because it belongs to runtime execution,
not compile time.

So, I propose that Kevin's version in the CVS will be discarded. This
sounds harsh, which is why I want to discuss this first. I hope you
agree.

Btw: if JCompiler uses ErrorList instead of its own "compile error
messages" window, maybe only 3 classes remain, so from the base version
there will be not much left anyway.

Dirk.