[news.eclipse.technology.ldt] JSR 45 and support for non-Java class file

[Per Bothner <per@xxxxxxxxxxx>]

I don't see any mention of JSR-45 http://jcp.org/en/jsr/detail?id=45 .
This is about "Debugging Support for Other Languages" but its focus
is quite limited: Improved line number support in two ways:
(1) multiple source files per class files, such as cpp-style #includes.
(2) multiple "strata" supporting compiling language X to language Y
to language Z to bytecode.  An example is JSP to Java to bytecode.

I don't know whether Eclipse supports JSR-45, but it would be a useful
starting point.

The current CVS version of Kawa (http://www.gnu.org/software/kawa)
generates JSR-45-style SourceDebugExtension attributes.
Kawa is a framework to compile various high-level languages (Scheme,
XQuery, XPath, Emacs Lisp, and small subsets of XSLT and Common Lisp)
directly into bytescodes, together with an associated run-time system.
These are languages people think of as "interpreted" but they're actually
compiled just like Java is, including line number and local variable
attributes.  So there is no reason why Eclipse can't debug say a Scheme
file, setting breakpoints, viewing stack traces etc.

But Eclipse gets confused and acts dumb.  A stack trace will list a
foo.scm - but not the line number, and clicking on the stack trace
won't bring up the Scheme window.  This is annoying, and the sort
of thing that needs to be fixed.  I had hoped that adding the
SourceDebugExtension attribute would help, but it doesn't seem to make a difference.

The Kawa environment is an example of a mixed-language environment,
since most "application" will be a mix of Java, and Scheme (say).
--
	--Per Bothner
per@xxxxxxxxxxx   http://per.bothner.com/