Re: [jbosscache-dev] Storing k, v at root node of marshaled region and cache loaders.

Hi all, Yesterday while looking at a support case, I discovered an awkward behavior when it came to root region based marshalling nodes and cache loaders. Let's say you have a cache configured with a cache loader and have a region marshaled called starting at /me. I have created an MBean so that I can register/unregister classloader and activate/deactivate the region upon deployment/undeployment of the classes I wanna put under /me. Now, let's say that I put a k,v in /me which will get stored in the cache loader. If I know touch the deployment archive to force a redeployment and check the contents of the cache, they're empty. If I try to get the k I put under /me, it'll return nothing. Why? Simple: The cache instance is configured to preload from root (/) but when the region is activated, /me node is created. When the preloading phase comes, a check is made to see whether the node needs to be loaded: private boolean mustLoad(DataNode n, Object key) { if (log.isTraceEnabled()) { log.trace("mustLoad called with key=" + key + " and datanode=" + n); } return n == null || (n.containsKey(TreeCache.UNINITIALIZED) && (key == null || !n.containsKey(key))); } The problem is that nothing will be preloaded for at least the /me node, because the node is not null, and it's not TreeCache.UNINITIALIZED. Any child nodes under the region node do not have issues like this. This is likely a bug: maybe when the region is activated, the node should probably be created as TreeCache.UNINITIALIZED? I think this would work). It's true that you could say that putting data at the root node of the region is not a good idea regardless, but I think deep down this is a bug.

Thoughts? p.s. This is at least present in 1.4.x, need to check trunk. However, wanted to gather some thoughts before I continue debugging/ fixing it.