Re: To JNI or not to JNI (was: Supervision: another Java GUI for Subversion)

Harald Wellmann <Harald.Wellmann@gmx.de> writes:
...
> Interesting that most feedback so far refers to the CLI approach and
> not to the GUI itself...

There are already a handful of Java GUIs out there for Subversion. I
guess people are getting over the initial thrill (or terror, in some
cases ;).

> I'm not trying to build a Subversion API better than JNI or SWIG; I'm
> trying to build a GUI that abstracts from Subversion commands or API
> functions and focuses on user interaction.

Fair enough. Are the other Java GUIs not taking the path you
imagined?

...
> * there is a stable and complete Java API (and I don't care if its
> * generated via SWIG or hand-coded in JNI)

Ahhumm.

> * the Java classes and any required native libraries are built and
> * installed automatically with Subversion's build process and are by
> * default contained in precompiled Subversion packages.

This is a long-term goal for the people working on the Java bindings.

> As far as I can see, there are three attempts at creating a Java API,
> (1) using SWIG in subversion/bindings/swig

These are the only live initiative which is currently hosted in
Subversion's own repository. I've heard that one of the other Java
clients hand-coded their own JNI around Subverion's libraries, but
haven't found the time to look at them.

> (2) using JNI directly in subversion/bindings/java/jni (or does this
> depend on (1)? I don't think so, but I'm a bit confused by the READMEs

#2 is so old as to be defunct, and only remains in the tree as a
reference while we build the SWIG bindings. I've just added a note to
its README to that effect.

> (3) another hand-coded JNI library in the svnup project.

Yup, that'd be the one.

> ...all of them not really ready to use out-of-the box.
>
> Had I started my GUI with one of these APIs, I would have made little
> progress with the GUI itself and would still be dealing with the API.

That's correct. Wanna help out with removing that barrier?

-- 
Daniel Rall <dlr@finemaltcoding.com>
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