[C2 ClassLoading] RepositoryClassLoader - possible faults

[Stuart Roebuck <st...@adolos.co.uk>]

In my every ongoing task of trying to get C2 working, I have been learning about classloaders, and have spotted two things along the way that may be relevant:

1. java.io.File.getCanonicalPath() is broken on Java 1.2.?  I've noted the odd message on the net from other people with the same fault so this isn't unique to MacOS X.  Whilst getCanonicalPath doesn't guarantee to produce a platform independent path, it implies (as the name 'canonical' does) that the same path will always results in the same Canonical Path on a single machine.  However, currently it neither produces the 'absolute' path it is supposed to, nor does it resolve "../" path components.  This fault is also exhibited in the resulting File.getURL() method used by the current classloader mechanism in Cocoon. getURL does produce an absolute path, but doesn't resolve "../" path components.

2. There appears to be no code in the current classloader to prevent multiple duplicate URLs being added o a single URLClassLoader instance.  I discovered this when I printed out the result of a getURLs() method call and found three identical classpaths.  This may not cause any faults, but it certainly doesn't look like an efficient mechanism in the long-run.


If point 1 is fixed on 1.3 this might be related to the faults only some people are experiencing with the current classloader.


Stuart.

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Stuart Roebuck                                  stuart.roebuck@adolos.com
Lead Developer                                  Mac OS X, Java, XML, etc.
ADOLOS                                             http://www.adolos.com/