I like to learn new Java features before they are officially released, and that requires using unstable builds. The difficulty is to integrate the new compiler into a build – for the JDK 1.7 I released jarc as an experimental package, but that was not a very good solution.
Since version 0.2.26, jarc can use an experimental compiler, like the one supporting lambda. If you installed the new JDK at /home/petithug/jdk8, you will only need to add the following lines to the /etc/jarc.conf file to be able to build jar files that use closures:
jdk-java_8-openjdk=/home/petithug/jdk8/bin/java
jdk-tools_8-openjdk=/home/petithug/jdk8/lib/tools.jar
canonical_8=1.8-openjdk
canonical_1.8=1.8-openjdk
canonical_8-openjdk=1.8-openjdk
canonical_1.8-openjdk=1.8-openjdk
jre-check_1.8-openjdk=/home/petithug/jdk8/jre/bin/java
jre-bootclasspath_1.8-openjdk=/home/petithug/jdk8/jre/lib/rt.jar:/home/petithug/jdk8/jre/lib/jce.jar
jre-source_1.8-openjdk=1.8
jre-exec_1.8-openjdk=/home/petithug/jdk8/jre/bin/java
Jarc always use by default the most recent compiler, but you can override this with the -Jjdk=7 or -Jjdk=6 option.
The new version of jarc also support passing parameters to the JVM – either at build time or at run time – by using the -J option.
Finally it is now possible to add an X-Jarc-Debug parameter at the manifest level. This option works just like the -g option in javac. I added this option to be able to build programs for aparapi – more about this in a future post.