From: Chan, Sunny <Sunny.Chan@gs.com>
To: Andrig T Miller <anmiller@redhat.com>
Subject: RE: JDK 6 Bugs
Date: Fri, 1 Jun 2007 10:48:58 +0100

Hi Andrig,

Thanks for your reply.

I am just a bit curious: Is there any reason why you need to compile JBoss on Java 6? I have downloaded the source package for 4.0.5 compile with Java 5 and running unit test with this build and I have found no problem at all. I did tried to compile that with Java 6 and found that most of the errors I found are due to the fact that JDBC has been upgrade to version 4 which has introduced new methods in JDBC interfaces, and JBoss unit test infrastructure that implements these JDBC interfaces need to be updated to provide at least a mock method for them.

In terms of the bug that you mention, I have checked the bug database and looks like the behaviour for loading array classes via Classloader.loadClass() has been disallowed, and the API has never been intended to be used with array syntax, see http://bugs.sun.com/bugdatabase/view_bug.do?bug_id=4976356. The workaround for this is to add to system property "sun.lang.ClassLoader.allowArraySyntax=true", which reverts JDK 6 to previous behaviour. However I would suggested that for long term you should modify JBoss code to use alternative interface to get an array class, for example java.lang.reflect.Array.newInstance().

If I can further assist you on this please do not hesitate to contact me.

Sunny Chan
Enterprise Java Engineering
Goldman Sachs International

Voice: +44 (0)207 774 3695
Mobile: +44 (0)782 525 6483
email: sunny.chan@gs.com

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From: Andrig T Miller [mailto:anmiller@redhat.com]
Sent: Thursday, May 31, 2007 7:26 PM
To: Chan, Sunny
Subject: JDK 6 Bugs

Sunny,

     I am the VP of Engineering for the JBoss Division, and I can help you out with more details on the JDK 6 issues that we have seen.  The first problem is that we cannot build from source with JDK 6.  I don't have a specific bug for that, as we have not had sufficient time to spend on the problem to open a bug report on it.  The second problem is a class loading regression that affects our code at runtime (built with JDK 5, run on JDK 6), and the following link is the bug id in the Sun database:

http://bugs.sun.com/bugdatabase/view_bug.do?bug_id=6434149

If you could help to push this, that would be great.  I have voted for the bug to be fixed, but it was not fixed in the first update release of JDK 6.

Andrig (Andy) Miller VP of Engineering JBoss, a division of Red Hat