[tcljava-dev] Tcl/Java 1.3.0 release is online.

[Mo D. <md...@un...>]

The Tcl/Java 1.3.0 release is now available for download. There
is also a new project website that can be accessed at the following
URL:

http://tcljava.sourceforge.net/docs/website/index.html

There are so many new features and fixed bugs in the 1.3.0
release, I don't even know where to begin. This release was
about 3 years in the making, so it is by no means a minor
upgrade. Please download and test it out, just be aware that
this is not a production release. Significant evaluation and
testing are still needed before 1.3 is considered safe for
production systems.

Here is a short rundown of the new features:

(NEW REGULAR EXPRESSION PACKAGE FOR JACL)

A new implementation of the regexp and regsub commands has been
donated by Colin Stevens of Sun Labs fame. This replaces the
Oro regexp implementation. It was binary only and no longer supported.
Jacl is now 100% Open Source.

(NEW COMMAND FOR JACL)

An implementation of Tcl's binary command has been added to Jacl.
This new command passes all of the Tcl regression tests for the
binary command. Thanks go to Christian Krone for this command.

(NEW COMMAND FOR JACL)

An implementation of Tcl's history command has been added to Jacl.
This new command passes all of the Tcl regression tests for the
history command. Thanks go to Christian Krone for this command.

(JVM SUPPORT)

A completely new build system has been added. It now supports
the IBM Java-2 1.3 JVM. The new build system also adds
support for the Kaffe Open JVM with Tcl Blend. Jacl has worked
with Kaffe for some time, but now both Tcl Blend and Jacl can
be used with Kaffe.

(NEW COMMAND FOR JACL)

An implementation of Tcl's interp command has been added to Jacl.
This new command passes all of the Tcl regression tests for the
interp command. Thanks go to Christian Krone for this command.

(TCL BLEND NOW FULLY THREAD AWARE)

Earlier versions of Tcl Blend made use of a global lock that
serialized each Java method call. In the new version,
Tcl Blend's JNI code has been rewritten to get rid of this
global lock. This change significantly simplifies the code
and should increase performance when Java methods are invoked
from multiple threads.

(NEW COMMAND FOR JACL)

The fconfigure command has been added to Jacl. Thanks go to
Bruce Johnson for providing the initial implementation
of this command.

(NEW COMMAND FOR JACL)

The encoding command has been added to Jacl. Thanks go to
Bruce Johnson for providing the initial implementation
of this command.

(NEW COMMAND FOR JACL)

The socket command has been added to Jacl. Both client sockets
and server sockets are supported. Thanks go to Neil Madden
for providing the the initial implementation of this command.

(NEW COMMAND FOR JACL)

The file volumes subcommand has been added to Jacl. The
implementation makes use of the File.listRoots() method
introduced in JDK 1.2, so a newer JDK is required to
make use of this functionality. Thanks go to Shawn Boyce
for providing the initial implementation of this command.

(NEW REF COUNT SYSTEM FOR TCL BLEND)

A new reference counting system has been implemented for
Tcl Blend. A newly created CObject or TclList no longer
increments the ref count the native Tcl_Obj. Instead,
the ref count for a Tcl_Obj is incremented when
TclObject.preserve() is invoked and decremented
when TclObject.release() is invoked. If a TclList
created inside a Java method is never released,
it will be cleaned up when the Java method returns.
This new ref counting system does not depend on the
Java garbage collector and should not suffer from
the memory leaks or shutdown issues that plagued
the previous implementation.

(NEW REFLECTED METHOD/CONSTRUCTOR/FIELD ACCESS)

A new approach to reflected method, constructor, and field
access has been implemented. In the previous implementation,
package scoped entities were considered when accessing a field,
when attempting to resolve a method signature, or when choosing
a constructor. In the new implementation, these package scoped
entities are only considered when a custom package invoker
is defined for the package.

(PASSING MULTIPLE JVM OPTIONS)

The tclblend_init variable has provided a means to pass a single
JVM option to a JDK 1.2 or newer JVM. This support has been
improved so that multiple JVM options can now be passed.

(NEW REFLECTED OBJECT ACCESS)

A new approach to reflected object access has been implemented.
In the previous implementation, inaccessible objects could
be reflected in the interpreter. This type of access would
be illegal in Java code, so new Class accessibility checks
have been added to each of the java methods. An exception
will now be raised on any attempt to interact with an
inaccessible class.

(PASSING TCL OBJECTS TO JAVA)

It is now possible to pass a TclObject directly to a Java method.
In previous versions it was possible to pass a TclObject contained
in a ReflectObject, but it was not possible to pass the actual
TclObject that contained the ReflectObject. The new implementation
makes it possible to directly pass the containing TclObject assuming
it is not a ReflectObject that contains a TclObject.

(CHANGE TO TCL OBJECT API)

The TclObject.takeExclusive() method has a number of problems, and has
been deprecated in favor of the new TclObject.duplicate() method.
This new duplicate method works identically to Tcl_DuplicateObj.
Old code that makes used of the takeExclusive method will still
work, but it should be updated to use duplicate as time permits.
See the TclObject manual entry for an example of how to use this
new duplicate method.

(NEW COMMAND FOR JACL)

The array unset subcommand has been added to the Jacl's array command.

(NEW WINDOWS BUILD SUPPORT)

Both Tcl Blend and Jacl can now be built under Windows using the
msys_mingw package. Users no longer need to have VC++ installed
to build binaries of Jacl or Tcl Blend. See the supplied README
file for Jacl or Tcl Blend for more information about how to
build under Windows.

(NEW IO SUBSYSTEM FOR JACL)

The Tcl IO subsystem has been ported to Jacl. Encoding, buffering,
and line translations for channels now match Tcl semantics.
Non-blocking IO and the fileevent command are not implemented.

cheers
Mo DeJong