[erlang-questions] JInterface

[Paul Guyot]

> Date: Wed, 18 Mar 2009 10:25:14 +0000
> From: Robert Lally <rob.lally@REDACTED>
> Subject: [erlang-questions] JInterface
> To: erlang-questions@REDACTED
> Message-ID:
> 	<af7f542c0903180325re4d627dw7dc35470ad7726c4@REDACTED>
> Content-Type: text/plain; charset="iso-8859-1"
>
> Hi folks,
> I've just run the JInterface 1.4.2 code through the IDEA code  
> analyser and
> it reports quite a few issues. Some of these are trivial - javadoc  
> that
> doesn't match the function. Some are a little more significant -  
> variables
> that are never read, parameters that are never used, named labels  
> that no
> code ever jumps to, private constructors that are never called,  
> declared
> exceptions that are never thrown. There are also a few that look quite
> significant - overriding finalize without calling super.finalize().
>
> Is there a specific place to talk about JInterface issues? Or is  
> this list
> the appropriate forum?

I'd also like to know. Several months ago, I reported to erlang-bugs@  
a bad flaw of JInterface 1.4.2 (OtpErlangRef.equals() is overridden,  
but not hashCode(), making refs useless in most Java collections), and  
while a fix is trivial, the problem is still present in JInterface 1.5.

Fortunately, Erlang/OTP is open source. This makes bug fixing and  
patching very easy. As a result, we apply many (20+) patches on  
production servers. We submitted patches for bugs we fixed, so other  
users won't have to go through the burden of identifying the bugs,  
making sure they are in Erlang/OTP and fixing them. I'd like to insist  
that bugs in what might be considered as obscure parts of OTP  
definitely affect several users, for example one can find several  
workarounds in open source projects (e.g. tcerl) for bugs we fixed in  
erl_interface. Some of our patches have even been included in MacPorts  
and FreeBSD ports distributions. Yet, I wish more patches were  
included upstream and related bugs were fixed.

Paul