[Ginp-developers] java.util.Preferences again..

[Justin <ju...@sq...>]

Doug,

	I'm getting that java.util.prefs failure again where it forgets how it 
was configured.  I loaded up the JDK in the eclipse debugger and found 
the problem deep in the guts of the preferences API.  In 
java.util.prefs.XmlSupport the last line of the code snippet below is 
throwing a NullPointerException.  This is the code it's executing while 
trying to read the user's java preferences file.  Interestingly enough 
this happens in Resin but not in Tomcat.  This is due to an XML library 
that is not compatible with the preferences API that is included in 
Resin 2.1 series.  So since java preferences is seems to be fundametally 
broken on the 2.1 resin series I think we should put in the install 
notes that we recommend you don't use Resin 2.1.  I am sure you get it 
to work with some serious classpath hacking but that's to difficult for 
most people.

     static void importMap(InputStream is, Map m)
         throws IOException, InvalidPreferencesFormatException
     {
         try {


             Document doc = load(is);
             Element xmlMap = (Element) doc.getChildNodes().item(1);
             // check version
             String mapVersion = xmlMap.getAttribute("MAP_XML_VERSION");

I am almost thinking that maybe for the next version we should just dump 
the preferences api on Unix and just write a file named .ginp into the 
user's home directory with simple java properties syntax.  There seems 
to be a lot of grumbling about the Preferences API around the net:

http://www.google.com/search?hl=en&q=syncWorld+preferences&btnG=Google+Search

Justin