Job for native file system compilation artifacts?

[iloveeclipse]

Triggered by #2779, I see that our file system native bits (org.eclipse.core.filesystem.*) are manually checked into git and not automatically generated / checked in like in SWT.

I wonder if we can update our build pipeline to build native artifacts "on the fly"?

The reason for doing so is: with #2779 I must provide native bits for Mac too, but I have no access to Mac at all. If we would have automated artifacts build & check in, the problem could be solved.

Another alternative for me now is to split Mac & Linux implementations and make sure the PR only affects Linux code or somehow cross-compile on Linux for Mac (no idea how).

Any thoughts?

[HannesWell]

checked into git and not automatically generated / checked in like in SWT.

That's indeed a pain-point, but setting up a fully working native compilation pipeline would require quite some changes, including moving the Jenkins jobs of this project from the platform to the RelEng Jenkins instance.

It's all doable as SWT and Equinox prove.

However, since Java-25 is allowed for the next development cycle, i.e. for the December release, the JNA and native code based file-system implementations are the first parts I want to use FFM for.
Mainly to resolve this pain-point of manually built and checked in native binaries.

Since I think it's not worth the effort to set up such native compilation for two, three months, my suggestion is to either hold back the contribution you linked until September (where the new cycle starts) or use a multi-release jar in the meantime.
The latter makes the new code only usable when using Java-25 to execute it, so a fallback would be required for JREs below 25.

[iloveeclipse]

Hmm.
Wrote some code, trying to debug it, I don't see it is loaded as expected.

I'm right in the assumption, that PDE is not MR compatible yet, means debugging Eclipse from Eclipse doesn't load any "extra" versions from MR bundle? Or is that even Equinox issue? Or just missing some flags to say PDE and/or Equinox the code they load from my workspace is MR capable?

[laeubi]

I have added MR launch support for JDT here: eclipse-jdt/eclipse.jdt.debug#753 I'm not sure how much PDE reuse in general if things are on the classpath it is supposed to work, but especially for workspace products PDE do some tricks so it might be the case something is missing here, but it would be a good opportunity to add support for this.

Basically a MR folder just needs to be added like an extra classfolder (just as the first entry) I hope the PR gives some insights, so I would set a breakpoint there where PDE is adding the developemnt entries for the classloading to see if the output folder is just missing.

Theoretically one would need support for additional manifests but that should not be needed here with only newer java version used.

[iloveeclipse]

It looks like equinox is not prepared by PDE to work in debug state with MR bundles, it seem that it only has MR support for jars, not for multiple bin folders? In the stack below the ClasspathEntry (configured to use Java 17 & default /bin folder) is taken.
I assume the dev.properties written by PDE is not complete, so org.eclipse.osgi.internal.hooks.DevClassLoadingHook.addClassPathEntry(ArrayList<ClasspathEntry>, String, ClasspathManager, Generation) only creates entry for the default output folder, I see only org.eclipse.core.filesystem=bin entry.

As a result, only bin is found here:

Thread [main] (Suspended)	
	ClasspathEntry.findEntry(String) line: 209	
	ClasspathManager.findClassImpl(String, ClasspathEntry, List<ClassLoaderHook>) line: 675	
	ClasspathManager.findLocalClassImpl(String, ClasspathEntry[], List<ClassLoaderHook>) line: 657	
	ClasspathManager.findLocalClassImpl(String, List<ClassLoaderHook>) line: 637	
	ClasspathManager.findLocalClass(String) line: 616	
	EquinoxClassLoader(ModuleClassLoader).findLocalClass(String) line: 353	
	BundleLoader.findLocalClass(String) line: 418	
	BundleLoader.findClass0(String, boolean, boolean) line: 527	
	BundleLoader.findClass(String) line: 439	
	EquinoxClassLoader(ModuleClassLoader).loadClass(String, boolean) line: 195	
	EquinoxClassLoader(ClassLoader).loadClass(String) line: 490	

I've pushed draft PR, feel free to check where PDE fails: #2784

[iloveeclipse]

Here is a very simple bundle which also doesn't work in PDE: MRplugin.zip, it always loads Java 17 classes. I guess it will be easier to debug with that.

[iloveeclipse]

I've created eclipse-pde/eclipse.pde#2391

[iloveeclipse]

OK, thanks everyone. I decided to not invest time in MR story, and simply provide a Linux binary which I can build/test/debug/validate, see #2793 :-)

If in 4.42 we would be able to use Java 25 for platform, we should be able to port the code to FFM and get rid of native binaries.