Bck2BrwsrChangeLog

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Change log for the Bck2Brwsr JVM:

Contents

Next Version 0.52 Will ...

  • Fastforward seven years and updating Closure compiler to version v20210601 - required bunch of fixes of unused variables, wrong code, etc.
  • Checking ClassCastException before calling lambda methods
  • Using importScripts when Bck2Brwsr is used in a Worker

Version 0.51

Version 0.51 of Bck2Brwsr VM is even better than Bck2Brwsr 0.50:

  • Important bugfixes for Gradle --continuous mode
  • Improved emulation of java.util.function and java.util.stream packages

Version 0.50

The Bck2Brwsr project has been updated to work with 2021 technologies:

No more RetroLambda. Instead of RetroLambda there is now an abstract IndyHandler interface with two implementations:

The removal of RetroLambda is a good thing - the system was fragile. It relied on reflection and internal behavior of JDKs. However, replacing it with homemade implementation is a request for regressions - finding and supporting all the corner cases is going to take some time. Thanks to Johan Vos, who managed to compile JavaFX with Bck2Brwsr transpiler and reported quite a few bugs. The likehood Bck2Brwsr 0.50 is going to work is now higher!


The easiest way to report an error is to enhance one of existing test-cases:

Thanks in advance for trying and helping Bck2Brwsr to get better!

Version 0.32

Version 0.31

Updating to Apache Html4Java API version 1.6.1

Version 0.30

  • Add support for JDK11
  • Remove support for JDK7
  • Obfuscation bugfix that makes ko4j work.

Version 0.23

After few months the newest version of Bck2Brwsr VM is here. It contains:

It was quite a fun to write Gradle tasks together with Maven and build them by Maven.

Get started with README. Enjoy.

Version 0.22

  • Support for Apache HTML/Java API version 1.5.1
  • Exceptions capture stacktrace via Error.stack when created (if the stack field is supported)

Version 0.21

Contains necessary bugfixes to run Dew with most recent versions of the used projects:

  • Internationalization issues fixed
  • Proxies now implement even super interfaces
  • Caching a miss when running tests
  • Use of shl64 fixed.
  • Update to JDK8_144

List of changes is here

Version 0.20

This version of Bck2Brwsr VM is called Radtouren 2017 version, as it has been prepared and released while our gang was bicycling in Korutany. Sleeping in a tent in camps, bicycling whole day, coding in a morning. What can be more fun?

Wanna transpile Java to JavaScript. Give Bck2Brwsr a try!

Version 0.19

Bck2Brwsr 0.19 comes with many little improvements and one new feature: it can execute JUnit in the browser!

  • Better support for Annotation - so good that bck2brwsr can now execute JUnit tests
  • Support for all classes from java.util.concurrent package, so JUnit runs without problems
  • Switching to version 2.1.0 for RetroLambda
  • More robust generated JavaScript file - doesn't override already defined classes
  • Uses version 1.3 of Html4Java API.
  • Record name of an OSGi bundle to be used when Maven coordinates are missing like in JUnit case
  • Don't convert Date objects to current time millis
  • Use boolean.valueOf() to simplify mixing of boxed and unboxed booleans
  • Perform more conversions before returning Java value to JavaScript from a Java callback
  • Launcher.createBrowser can specify its own page
  • Make sure class cast exception contains the same message as produced by JDK
  • Convert undefined value read from arrays into null
  • Convert content of array properly before entering JavaScript
  • Turning the bck2brwsr VM into an OSGi bundle
  • Introducing vmtest.precompiled=<regexp> property to verify that bck2brwsr generated resources are really used
  • Don't include VM in VMTest initialization, let it be loaded on demand
  • System.exit terminates associated launcher
  • eval(JavaScriptResource) as string to prevent double obfuscation
  • Don't report warnings when generating minified version of bck2brwsr libraries

Get the bits from the Maven central repository!

Version 0.17

Bck2Brwsr version 0.17 is faster. Ten years ago nobody would imagine dynamic languages could get as good performance as they have now. The feeling that JavaScript just can't be fast is presumably present in many of our souls. The truth is, it can be relatively fast - not as fast as Java as my experiment with Sieve of Eratosthenes shows, but pretty damn fast. Certainly not an excuse to be ten times slower than HotSpot (which was the previous state of Bck2Brwsr).

The daily work on Truffle compiler team and the time I got when traveling from Snowcamp at Grenoble gave me a chance to speed Bck2Brwsr up. The sieve being a nice - e.g. small and focused - benchmark. Originally the algorithm couldn't be finished in a reasonable time when running on old version of Bck2Brwsr, but knowing what optimizing compilers seek for, it was relatively easy to speed it up ten times.

With great pleasure I announce that Bck2Brwsr, the most complete Java VM in browser (that can run Javac as shown by Dew project) has been sped up many times being at most three times slower than HotSpot. Given the primary goal of Bck2Brwsr is modularity and not speed, I consider it a good sped up even knowing there is a room to make it even faster.

Enjoy the Bck2Brwsr 0.17's speed!

Version 0.16

Bck2Brwsr now bundles precompiled Bck2BrwsrLibraries for HTML/Java API version 1.2.3. Better handling of fully qualified names that contain an underscore. Reflection to non-static methods passes parameters the right way.

Release 0.14 and 0.15

Bugfix 5930. Implemented StrictMath to delegate to Math. Locale reads real user locale from surrounding browser. A bit more optimized for execution on Chrome. Fixes a VM bug so JBox2D Physics Engine executes without errors. Support for signed JARs.

The original plan to run RxJava in Bck2Brwsr VM (demo available at http://xelfi.cz/RxJava/0.1/) has not materialized. I got upset as the RxJava guys decided to not accept my pull request for artificial reasons. Looks like they don't have much clue about modularity.

Release 0.13

Release 0.13 of Bck2Brwsr VM is mostly a bugfix release. It fixes problem in Collections.shuffle caused by wrong shr64 implementation (which was basically a single character fix, but it took me an hour to find it) and library generating problem on computers using different encoding than UTF-8.

The Bck2Brwsr VM 0.13 is good enough to power another classical game: fifteen.

The released bits are @ maven.java.net repository as of Jan 12, 2015.

Release 0.12

Libraries can be pre-compiled and published as Maven artefacts (see Bck2BrwsrLibraries how to). The Knockout4Java Maven archetype has been modified to use the precompiled version of Bck2Brwsr rt. jar emulation library and HTML/Java APIs: 

$ mvn archetype:generate \
  -DarchetypeGroupId=org.apidesign.html \
  -DarchetypeArtifactId=knockout4j-archetype \
  -DarchetypeVersion=1.1.2 \
  -Dbck2brwsr=true
# answer few questions...
$ cd nameofyourproject
# run on desktop
$ mvn process-classes exec:java
# run in a browser
$ mvn -Pbck2brwsr clean package bck2brwsr:show

Supporting Bck2BrwsrBlobURLs so one can display images available as in JAR resources.

Release 0.11

The new version fixes problems with obfuscation mode (a regression in Bck2Brwsr 0.10). Now the final application can be FULLy obfuscated and the sample org.apidesign.html:knockout4j-archetype:1.0 seems to work with version 0.11. System has nanoTime method (per requests of Toni Epple). Iterating through JavaScript or Java array 

var array = [1, 3, 5]
for (var i in array) {
  console.log(i);
}

shows only 0, 1, 2. All additional Bck2Brwsr functions are added as non-enumerable.

Release 0.10

The ahead-of-time mode has support for JDK8's Lambdas (thanks to RetroLambda project). Following example properly returns "XXXXXXXXXX" in Bck2Brwsr 0.10 when compound methods is called: 

private static void fewTimes(Runnable r, int cnt) {
    while (cnt-- > 0) {
        r.run();
    }
}
 
public static String compound() {
    StringBuilder sb = new StringBuilder();
    fewTimes(() -> sb.append('X'), 10);
    return sb.toString();
}

My experience from implementing lambdas in Bck2Brwsr VM was so horrible that I had to express my hate of invokeDynamic in a dedicated essay. Such instruction should have never be added into the JVM specification! See the Lambdas Go Bck2Brwsr video:

Support for JDK8 defender and interface static methods. In the following example the method defaultValue properly returns 42 in Bck2Brwsr 0.10: 

public interface Value {
    public static int staticValue(Value v) {
        return v.value();
    }
 
    public default int value() {
        return 42;
    }
 
    public static int defaultValue() {
        return staticValue(new Value() {});
    }
}

The support for lamdas does not mean Bck2Brwsr 0.10 supports JDK8 APIs. It does not. The libraries are still subset of JDK7 - one can use lamdas only in own code so far. Technically it should not be a problem to backport JDK8, libraries - it just has not been done yet.

Using Object.defineProperty to make sure the JavaScript Object has all the methods of Object, while those methods do not show up during iteration 

for (var p in anObject) {
  console.log('A prop found ' + p);
}

Release 0.9

Version 0.9 eliminates useless stack assignments. Instead of doing 

var stI0 = lcI0;
var stI1 = lcI1;
var stI0 = stI0 + stI1;
return stI0;

the now generated code is 

return lcI0 + lcI1;

which is shorter and more human readable. However I doubt the V8 virtual machine sees any benefits - I think the final native code remains the same. But at least the debugging of the generated JavaScript code is now easier - there is less Step Over invocations and it mimics more closely the original Java source.


Optimized the ahead-of-time compilation, so now the http://xelfi.cz/minesweeper/bck2brwsr/ demo starts up instantly. I had to do it, because it was so embarrassing to see TeaVM to boot the same application so quickly: The initial delay is gone, and moreover it downloads necessary libraries in parallel and on background. Now we are ready for next step: share the libraries between different applications.

Can ObfuscatePerLibrary - e.g. each JAR gets compiled ahead-of-time into its own JavaScript file, which can be shared between many applications.

Release 0.8.1

Release 0.8


Release 0.7.2


Release 0.7

Release 0.6

  • Full featured demo Twttr demo
  • Bck2Brwsr provides better binding of complex classes (defined by a special @Model) annotation
  • The @Model classes can be obtained from a server via JSON and JSONP. Use @OnReceive annotation
  • Browser testing harness has nicer output with UL and expandable LI

Release 0.5

  • Bck2Brwsr 0.5 has better support for MVVC via Knockout.js - see the calculator demo version 0.5
    • Binds String and primitive types
    • Bind array types (exposed as List
    • Basic binding of complex classes
  • Separate module for Maven archetype called org.apidesign.bck2brwsr:bck2brwsr-archetype-html-sample (and thus instructions for getting Bck2BrwsrViaCLI has changed)
  • Improved speed of Bck2Brwsr virtual machine via better control flow
  • Can use Closure compiler to generate more compact code
    • FULL mode: For batch compilation of everything for now (example pom.xml that uses the j2js goal)
    • MINIMAL mode: Strips spaces. Works in dynamic mode (part of the default Maven archetype)
  • One incompatible change: AnnotationProcessor for the @Page annotation no longer capitalizes field names found in the HTML page. This was meaningful when the fields were static constants. Now (when they are plain instance fields) it makes little sense.

Release 0.4

0.4 is the first release we managed to upload to java.net Maven repository. Heuréka! See Bck2BrwsrViaCLI for simple three steps towards using this version of Bck2Brwsr.

What you can expect? It works. It is sometimes not fast. It is sometimes broken (what would you expect after four months of development?). Errata:

  • When you create new project and want to use it in NetBeans, you need to update nbactions.xml file to refer to 0.4 version, rather than 0.3-SNAPSHOT.

Here is list of achievements for the 0.4 version:

  • Throwing and catching exceptions by Tomáš Z., finally block by me.
  • Support for converting ByteCode in the browser
  • Speed via register based system - Ľubomír finished first version of his register based rewrite on Dec 14, 2012.
  • Speed benchmark and infrastructure to measure it in various environments - Martin Š.
    • Run with -Dvmtest.brwsrs=firefox,chromium-browser (or any other browsers you want to test)
  • Maven archetype for creating the calculator like demos
  • Int32, Int16, Int8 arithmetics done by Martin Š.
  • API for drawing on the canvas: Thanks Toni! Read about his experience using Bck2Brwsr.
  • More precise int64 support - Martin Š. working on
  • Convertor from GWT's native code to Bck2Brwsr's @JavaScriptBody - is sort of there, but not really functional.
  • Fields of same name in subclasses. Thanks to Bck2BrwsrMangling.
  • Compatibility tests can be written with help of @Compare annotation
  • Basic reflection support (e.g. Bck2Brwsr throws SecurityException when allowed),
    • Done: Class.newInstance() works.
    • Done: Class.getMethods() works (returns only public methods)
    • Done: Annotations of classes and methods
  • Support for MVVC like Knockout.js that binds String and primitive types
  • Packages into a static website via JAR files (which then take long time to inflate)
  • Implements java.util.zip APIs
Retrieved from "http://wiki.apidesign.org/wiki/Bck2BrwsrChangeLog"
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