Bye Bye Jaxby

So one of the biggst changest affecting my projects with Java 11 is the removal of java.xml.bind from the openjdk. This is a bit of a pain because the main reason I used it was the convenience, which is a double pain because not only do i have to undo all that inconvience, all that time using and learning it in the first place has just been confirmed as wasted.

I tried using the last release as modules but they are incompatible with the module system because one or two of the packages are split. I tried just making a module out of them but couldn't get it to work either. And either i'm really shit at google-foo or it's just shit but I couldn't for the life of me find any other reasonable approach so after wasting too much time on it I bit the bullet and just wrote some SAXParser and XMLStreamWriter code mandraulically.

Fortunately the xml trees I had made parsing quite simple. First, none of the element names overlapped so even parsing embedded structures works without having to keep track of the element state. Secondly almost all the simple fields were encoded as attributes rather than elements. So this means almost all objects can be parsed from the startElement callback, and a single stack is used to track encapsulated fields. Becuase I use arrays in a few places a coule of ancilliary lists are used to build them (or I could just change them to Lists).

It's still tedious and error-prone and a pretty shit indightment on the state of Java SE in 2018 vs other languages but once it's done it's done and not having a dependency on half a dozen badly over-engineered packages means it's only done once and i'm not wasting my time learning another fucking "framework".

I didn't investigate where javaee is headed - it'll no doubt eventually solve this problem but removing the dependency from desktop and command-line tools isn't such a bad thing - there have to be good reasons it was dropped from JavaSE in the first place.

One might point to json but that's just as bad to use as a DOM based mechanism which is also just as tedious and error prone. json only really works with fully dynamic languages where you don't have to write any of the field bindings, although there are still plenty of issues with no canonicalised encoding of things like empty arrays or null strings. In any event I need file format compatability so the fact that I also think it's an unacceptably shit solution is entirely moot.

Modules

By the end of the week i'd modularised my main library and ported one of the applications that uses it to the new structure. The application itself also needs quite a bit of modularisation but that's a job for next week, as is testing and debugging - it runs but there's a bunch of broken shit.

So using the modules it's actually quite nice - IF you're using modules all the way down. I didn't have time to look further to find out if it's just a problem with netbeans but adding jars to the classpath generally fucks up and it starts adding strange dependencies to the build. So in a couple of cases I took existing jars and added a module-info myself. When it works it's actually really nice - it just works. When it doesn't, well i'm getting resource path issues in one case.

I also like the fact the tools are the ones dictating the source and class file structures - not left to 3rd party tools to mess up.

Unfortunately I suspect modularisation will be a pretty slow-burn and it will be a while before it benefits the average developer.

Netbeans / CVS

As an update on netbeans I joined the user mailing list and asked about CVS - apparently it's in the netbeans plugin portal. Except it isn't, and after providing screenshots of why I would think that it doesn't exist I simply got ignored.

Yeah ok.

Command line will have to do for me until it decides to show up in my copy.

Java After Next

So with Oracle loosening the reigns a bit (?) on parts of the java platform like JavaFX i'm a little concerned about where things will end up.

Outside of the relatively tight core of SE the java platform there are some pretty shitty "industry standard" pieces. ant - it's just a horrible to use tool. So horrible it looks like they've added javascript to address some of it's issues (oh yay). maven has a lot of issues beyond just being slow as fuck. The ease with which it allows one to bloat out dependencies is not a positive feature.

So yeah, if the "industry" starts dictating things a bit more, hopefully they wont have a negative impact.