NEWS/ChangeLog for rJava -------------------------- 0.8-1 2009-10-30 o fixed exception handling on Windows: the access to "call" was off for Windows builds causing incorrect "call" entries in exceptions which broke when encountered in try(). o fixed .jcall() which had inadvertently the default for use.true.class argument set to TRUE. That is considered a bug since it breaks the original behavior and is against the idea of .jcall being the low-level interface. 0.8-0 2009-10-27 o new exception handling was introduced: Java exceptions are mapped to Exception conditions which can be used to catch the exception at R level using e.g tryCatch. The class name automatically contains "Exception", "error" and "condition", as well as all the names (without package path) of the classes in the inheritance tree of the actual class of the Exception. This allows targetted handlers: tryCatch(.jnew("foo"), NoClassDefFoundError=function(e) ...) In addition JNI code now causes an error instead of a warning, however, some errors internal to JNI may not have an associated Java exception and thus will fire the usual simpleError condition. As a consequence of the new error handling exception objects are now supplied in e$jobj of the handler and .jgetEx() becomes obsolete. o added new high-level API using the "J" function. It replaces the previously used .J()/.jrnew() and .jrcall(). New Java objects are created using new(J("class"), ...) and static methods and fields are accessed using J("class")$... The corresponding implementation uses reflection in all cases. An additional class "jclassName" was created to support static calls to accessor methods such as $ and calls to new(). o [RF] arrays are now split in two classes : "jrectRef" for rectangular arrays, similar to R arrays, and jarrayRef for rugged arrays. Indexing of all arrays is supported using the double bracket indexer "[[" and "[[<-" The single indexer "[" is only currently implemented for rectangular arrays. This is experimental. Replacement ([<-) is not supported yet. o [RF] with.jclassName and within.jclassName is added to support "with" semantics on static fields and methods of java classes. Double <- J("java.lang.Double" ) with( Double, parseDouble( "10.2" ) ) o [RF] length.jarrayRef queries the number of objects in a java array. An exception is generated if the object is not an array. Also array$length can be used similary to array.length in java o [RF] .jcast gains arguments "check" and "convert.array". Their default value is FALSE for backwards compatibility with previous releases of rJava o [RF] Binary operators <, >, <=, >= to compare two objects where at least one is a java object reference. d <- new( J("java.lang.Double"), 0.0 ) d < 1.0 d < 1L Comparison of arrays is not currently supported o [RF] lapply and sapply may now be used on Iterable java objects such as Vector and java arrays. see ?as.list.jobjRef o [RF] The generic "clone" function is added, and an implementation for java objects. an Object must implement the Cloneable interface, otherwise an exception will be raised. Furthermore, careful reading of the java documentation of Object#clone is recommended since this is not standard java behaviour. Currently "clone" is not supported on arrays o [RF] A mechanism for "attach"ing java packages has been introduced, following the mechanism of the RObjectTables package from the OmegaHat project. This allows to "attach" a set of java package paths to R's search path: > attach( javaImport( "java.util", "java.lang" ) ) and then use classes from this package like this : > new( Vector ) > new( HashMap ) > new( Double, 10.2 ) > new( Integer, 10L ) > Collections$EMPTY_MAP This feature is currently __very__ experimental and is as dangerous as any other use of attach 0.7-1 (never released) o [RF] added .J high-level java constructor (based on reflection as opposed to complete match as .jnew does) o [RF] added .jinstanceof and instanceof operator o when loaded into another JVM (e.g. via JRI), rJava would crash on any call if .jinit() was missing. Now it correctly reports the error. o fixed synchronization issues in both JRI and REngine 0.7-0 2009-08-22 o fixed bug in $ getter of fields using old .jfield API o fixed a bug in .jevalArray which failed when the signature was specified directly (and subsequently .jfield failed in most cases) o improve speed of reflection-based API (.jrcall and `$') by using native array support in rJava o reflection API now returns NULL invisibly for void results o try to find the best match in reflection-based API using internal Java code (code and idea by Romain Francois) o added with() method for jobjRef (by Romain Francois), see http://romainfrancois.blog.free.fr/index.php? post/2009/06/17/with-semantics-for-java-objects-in-rJava o added names() method for jobjRef to facilitate code completion (based on code by RF: http://tr.im/w33B) o update to JRI 0.5-0 0.6-3 2009-06-14 o update to JRI 0.4-3 (adds REngine API, enhanced support for environments and references) o allow signatures longer than 256 bytes o added lib.loc parameter to .jpackage() 0.6-2 2009-01-26 o fix --enable-debug to really enable debug code o improve Windows setup (add only paths if they are not already listed and check thier presence first) and warn if the system suffers from PATH truncation bug (or PATH is truncated in general) [0.6-branch is created as a stable branch -- see trunk for development] 0.6-1 2008-12-23 o substitute $(JAVA_HOME) in configuration flags when necessary o flag generated strings as UTF-8 and convert incoming strings into UTF-8 (see note in ?.jcall for details) This should improve interoperability in non-UTF-8 locales (most prominent example is Windows) 0.6-0 2008-09-22 o add support for object cache - see .jcache() - based on Java serialization 0.5-2 (never released, turned into 0.6-0) o add direct support for raw vectors as method parameters (before .jarray(r) had to be used) o add .jserialize() and .junserialize() functions for Java-serialization (do not confuse with R serialization!) 0.5-1 2007-11-05 o fix crashes in Windows when Java calls the vfprintf hook o enhance Java environment checks, add more specific errors o add support for r.arch system property which allows multi-arch support on platforms that don't have fat binaries (e.g. Linux) 0.5-0 2007-08-22 o **API CHANGE** The order of arguments of .jfield has been changed to match the order used in .jcall and the return value is as expected and doesn't need .jsimplify anymore. o The implementation of .jfield no longer uses reflection it supports static fields and .jfield<-() was added. o Consolidate interface code for static/non-static calls. It is now possible to call a static method using a non-static object. o Add .jpackage function for initialization of Java packages. See documentation for details, packages should no longer use .jinit in their initialization code. o Add preliminary JRI support from R (see .jengine) o Prepare hooks for de-serialization o Add support for short Java type o Add support for convertors o Fix R-devel compatibility issues o Fix a memory leak in string array handling o Use Java settings from R for compilation o Add a custom class loader o Fix a bug in .jcastToArray that produced invalid signatures o Added support for [Z in .jevalArray o Fix a bug in .jarray missing [ prefix for native type arrays 0.4 branch has been branched off the trunk, see 0.4-branch for NEWS 0.4-13 2007-01-14 o Fix Java-side memory leaks (temporary parameters to methods were not propery released, thanks to Erik van Barneveld for supplying a reproducible example). o Fix a bug that caused only the first VM parameter to be passed on during initialization (thanks to Bernard Rosman for reporting). o .jmkref now accepts plain class names (with .) o Fix bug in .jarray (and underlying RcreateArray) that was returning wrong class name if the contents class was an array. o Add --enable-callbacks option to configure (disabled by default). The callbacks support is currently incomplete and experimental. o Update URL to http://www.rforge.net/rJava/ o Update to JRI 0.3-7 (LCons, createRJavaRef, assign XT_NONE) 0.4-12 2006-11-29 o Added documentation for .jthrow, .jclear and .jgetEx and a bugfix in .jgetEx o rJava now uses a namespace. This is still somewhat experimental, because rJava needs to perform some dirty tricks to unseal the namespace during initialization. Please test and report! o Update to JRI 0.3-6 (GIJ fix and fix for R-devel interface changes) 0.4-11 2006-10-10 o Replace variadic macros with wrappers (for compilers that don't support ISO C99). o Modify JNI error reporting - use warnings instead of direct stderr. o Update to JRI 0.3-5 0.4-10 2006-09-14 o Removed obsolete JNI 1.1 support that is no longer provided in JDK 1.6 and thus prevented rJava from being used with JDK 1.6 o Update to JRI 0.3-4 (change compilation to force Java 1.4 compatibility even when more recent JDK is used) 0.4-9 2006-09-12 o Update to JRI 0.3-3 which fixes API version mistake which 0.4-8 2006-09-11 o Added --enable-jri=auto option which will build JRI only if R shared library is present. It is now the default. o Update to JRI 0.3-2 (added boolean support) 0.4-7 2006-09-05 o .jevalArray now works with Java objects that have not been cast to a Java array explicitly. The function is now also documented properly. o Added .jgetEx and .jclear functions for querying and clearing of Java exceptions/throwables. o Added .jthrow to allow throwing of exceptions from R code. o Fixed a typo in .jrcall when handling string return values. 0.4-6 2006-08-20 o Fixed bug in initialization on Windows, introduced in 0.4-4 0.4-5 2006-06-24 o Added support for scalar bytes as .jbyte (byte arrays are still natively represented as RAW vectors) o Added .r2j function which allows to push R objects into Java as references. This works only if R is run via JRI, because it requires a working Rengine instance. 0.4-4 2006-06-21 o Fixed bug that prevented loading into existing VM if the classpath contained duplicate items. .jmergeClassPath now filters out duplicate paths. o .jcall and .jnew discard all named parameters that are passed as `...'. Named parameters are now reserved for future call options o Converted all S3-methods into S4 methods. Also `show' is now used instead of `print' and the output format was changed. o Protoype for jobjRef is now a valid null-Object o Added .jequals and corresponding ==, != op methods. Currently == and != operators feature the same behavior as .jequals(...,strict=FALSE), i.e. scalar non-Java objects are converted into Java objects if possible and then compared, so s <- .jnew("java/lang/String","foo") s == "foo" # returns TRUE o Added .jinherits which allows to check Java-side inheritance using JNI (= isAssignableTo). o Added .jfindClass and .jclassRef that return Java class object o Added check parameter to .jcall and .jnew that allows the caller to prevent implicit call to .jcheck It is mainly useful in cases where silent operation is desired (e.g. in conjunction with try). Additionally, silent parameter was added to .jnew o Added is.jnull which is like is.null but also returns TRUE if the supplied Java object is a null-reference o Added jlong class and .jlong function. Those were documented in the tutorial but never really implemented. Still, they may not be supported in all parts of rJava. WARNING: conversion between Java's long and R's jlong is lossy! R stores jlong in doubles so the conversion implies loss of precision. 0.4-3 2006-05-16 o improved, documented and fixed handling of fields .jfield is dedicated accessor with more options 0.4-2 2006-05-08 o Update to JRI 0.2-5 (no change in rJava) 0.4-1 2006-05-05 o Fixed bug in Windows initialization 0.4-0 2006-05-03 o JRI is now included in rJava 0.3-9 2006-04-20 o fixed a minor bug in Rglue.c that may prevent older compilers from compiling it. 0.3-8 2006-04-17 o .jinit has an additional parameter 'parameters' that allows users to pass additional parameters to the VM (such as -X...) o .jinit now uses a hack (defined in .jmergeClassPath) that allows us to modify the class path of a running VM. This may or may not work for a specific VM, because it is an ugly hack exploiting some implementational features of the VM. See .jmergeClassPath source for reference and explanation. o .jarray now supports the use of .jarray(x) where x is a Java reference. The documentation requires you to use .jarray(list(x)), but since the use of .jarray(x) seems to be a very common mistake, we may as well silently support it. o .jarray has an optional parameter contents.class which allows the global specification of the class type for arrays of objects. (Untested, use with care! In most cases .jcast is probably what you really want.) o Added some more support for floats, longs and byte arrays. (Again, untested) 0.3-7 2006-01-31 (non-public release) o New, experimental feature has been added - JNI cache. This feature can be enabled by passing --enable-jni-cache argument to configure. Normally, each time we access JVM we retrieve new JNI environment to make sure there are no threading issues. In single-threaded environment this is superfluous, so we may as well cache it. The idea is to reduce the overhead. However, the gain is not as huge as expected, so it is not enabled by default. Also note that threads and jni-cache are mutually exclusive. o Another even more experimental feature has been added - support for threads. This feature is enabled by using --enable-threads configure argument. When threads support is enabled, JVM is started on a thread separate from the main thread. Some implementations of AWT classes require this. However, it is not always safe to use, because R event loop is unaware of the separate thread and can deadlock it. 0.3-6 2006-01-30 0.3-5 2006-01-02 0.3-4 2005-12-28 0.3-3 2005-12-20 0.3 2005-12-19 [finalizers, arrays] 0.2 2005-09-03 [S4 classes] 0.1 2003-08-26 [initial release]