RE: Patches to java.util.zip by Christian Schlichtherle

[Jeroen Frijters]

Christian Schlichtherle wrote:
> > Unfortunately, we cannot add additional public constructors, 
> > but I would suggest adding a system property to control the 
> > encoding used by our zip implementation. By default we should 
> > be compatible with the JDK, but this would allow applications 
> > and/or users to override the encoding to be compatible with 
> > the rest of the world.
> 
> this would be an all-or-nothing-approach, i.e. you could have 
> CP437 for either all ZIP* objects or none. The constructors
> however allow you to define this on a case by case basis, e.g.
> using CP437 for any file ending with a .zip suffix and UTF-8
> for any file ending with a .jar suffix, which is the most
> reasonable general approach to deal with the encoding issue in
> my personal opinion (which is arguable however).

Personally, I'm almost always in favor of compatibility with the JDK and
in this case there is no doubt in my mind that we should use UTF-8 by
default. I recognize that the system property is only a hack that solves
a limited number of scenarios, but it's better than nothing.

> For my personal education: What's wrong about adding constructors?

It is a violation of the Sun license included with the API specification
-- you could argue about whether the license is valid or not, but that's
not the point, and it would preclude us (or any JVM based on GNU
Classpath) from ever passing the TCK.

Regards,
Jeroen