End of the road for Polarbar?

[Graham Norris]

I've started looking at Java 10 and Polarbar. I've not yet tested whether Polarbar (compiled with Java 8) still runs using a Java 10 JRE, but at the moment Polarbar will not compile with a Java 10 JDK.

There's been a massive reorganisation of Java, and it has introduced many incompatibilities, these started with Java 9 which I skipped (https://docs.oracle.com/javase/9/migrate/toc.htm#JSMIG-GUID-7744EF96-5899-4FB2-B34E-86D49B2E89B6). Many things Polarbar wants to use are missing (57 varieties for me.)

Although not directly relevant to Polarbar itself (I use it for some filters,) NetRexx will not compile with Java 9 and above either (http://ibm-netrexx.215625.n3.nabble.com/Java-JDK-9-no-tools-jar-td4028085.html.)

For many years, one of the good things about Java was its compatibility between versions. That's been considerably eroded now.

[WildWilly]

On Monday, April 23, 2018 at 4:45:35 PM UTC-4, Graham Norris wrote:

For many years, one of the good things about Java was its compatibility between versions. That's been considerably eroded now.

Java isn't the only thing.  Firefox has also taken a massive jump in incompatibility.  I have a plugin that I use daily that has needed a complete rewrite since Mozilla foisted Firefox 57 on the world.  I have remained on FF56 for the time being, until the plugin developer manages to compensate for all the roadblocks erected by the new FF.  He's getting close, actually, so there is hope.

I got the notification for the new Java within the past couple of days & I also noticed the ominous warning about end-of-life for Java as we know it.  Oracle is apparently going to use Java to make a cash grab.  I idly wondered whether I was going to have to change my E-mail client to . . . what do they call it?  Thunderbunny?  Whatever . . .  I fervently pray that you can figure out a way to extend the useful life of PolarBar Mailer.

Something odd started happening to my PBM last week.  When an E-mail includes an HTML attachment, the little icon on the attachment bar appears at the bottom of the PBM window.  When you hover the mouse over the icon, a tooltip is supposed to hover up showing the name of the attachment file.  This stopped happening.  In addition, if you click on the icon, it's supposed to launch the browser.  That also stopped working.  Clearly, I haven't changed PBM because PBM has not changed in a couple of years now.  The latest Java update had not appeared yet so it couldn't have been due to that.  But I hoped the update might fix this.  It has not.  And as I just mentioned, I have stuck with FF56, which continues to function otherwise.  I can launch FF by "executing" the HTML attachment from Windows Explorer.  But the seamless integration with PBM has suddenly disappeared.  Not sure that's relevant to this subject but it does seem a bit coincidental.

[fschodt]

If it's really the end of the road, any advice for an unsophisticated user would be highly appreciated. Is there a good migration path out of PBM?  I've been using it now for so many years (and JStreet Mailer before that). Even though it lags in functionality in some areas, it has served its purpose well. I assume that the end is not immediate, yes?

Fred

[Graham Norris]

First, the good news. Polarbar itself does run under Java 10. I've not fully tested it, but it can download and open emails. Furthermore, existing NetRexx classes still appear to run, although once again, not thoroughly tested.

So, as long as nothing needs fixing, I'm able to carry on as before, and so should most other people.

Problems such as not opening related programs when using current Java (i.e. 8 or below) is most likely nothing to do with Java itself: something else has changed on your system. I can still open HTML attachments even running using Java 10. Start by ensuring the path to your browser in "Tools/Settings/Program Launchers" is still correct. Firefox ESR will stay with the old extension method for a bit longer.

Compiling things is another matter altogether. I've just discovered that NetBeans won't work with Java 9 and above yet, you need a beta version to make that work. I don't use NetBeans much, but that something so closely tied to Java is itself broken by Java 9+ is ... interesting, to put it mildly.

[Bill Wild Willy Kredentser]

> ** Reply to message from Graham Norris <chocola...@gmail.com> on Thu, 26 Apr 2018 05:38:21 -0700 (PDT)

> Start by ensuring the path to your browser in
> "Tools/Settings/Program Launchers" is still correct.

Checked that before I posted. Besides, I haven't even looked at that, let alone changed it, in
years. There's nothing posted in the Java log when I click the icon, either. Not just no errors,
but nothing relevant to that mouse click that I can tell.

WW
GO HABS GO!
Configuration: Windows 7 Professional, Oracle Java build 1.8.0_171-b11 (2018/4/21), pbm1.26dev/2324

[Bill Wild Willy Kredentser]

> ** Reply to message from Bill "Wild Willy" Kredentser <wild...@fuse.net> on Thu, 26 Apr 2018 09:52:55 -0400

> > ** Reply to message from Graham Norris <chocola...@gmail.com> on Thu, 26 Apr 2018 05:38:21 -0700 (PDT)
>

> > Start by ensuring the path to your browser in
> > "Tools/Settings/Program Launchers" is still correct.
>

> Checked that before I posted. Besides, I haven't even looked at that, let alone changed it, in
> years.

Just to make sure, I copy/pasted the value of the setting out of the PBM settings screen into a
command line session. Firefox opened. To quote Yoda, not getting it am I.

[WildWilly]

On my attachment issue, I just received an E-mail that had a JPG attached.  Just for grins, I hovered the mouse over the attachment icon & got the tooltip to hover up.  That's a first in a week.  So I clicked it & the image was displayed in the PBM image displayer.  So then I tried another E-mail that had an HTML attachment.  And now it works fine.  Go figure.  So next time I see this issue (assuming it happens again) I'll just try a couple of different types of attachment to see if that wakes the attachment integration up.  Aren't programs wonderful?

[Graham Norris]

I've now been testing Polarbar, still compiled with the Java 8 JDK, on the Java 10 JRE. I've encountered three problems:

1. Two exceptions involving tooltips. These are not repeatable, and diagnostics I added after the first showed no problems in the data passed to the failing AWT function. It is possible this problem also exists with the Java 8 JRE as it does not seem to produce a noticable effect unless you happen to be watching the command window.
   
2. Sound produces an exception. Polarbar uses an internal Java API which has simply gone away with Java 10. I've been able to replace it with a supported API.
   
3. One failure of the popper to complete.
   

Unfortunately, Polarbar does trap many problems but in the process destroys useful diagnostic information (akin to the infamous pop-ups which tell you you just lost your data, doesn't say why, and only allows you to press "Okay" when Okay is clearly the last thing it is!)

Compiling with Java 10 with the replaced sound API reduces the number of compilation errors from 57 to 45. Quite a few of the rest relate to the ICE browser, which it should be possible to simply remove (although nothing is simple in Polarbar!)

[Graham Norris]

I now have a JDK 10 compiled version of Polarbar running on a Java 10 JRE. Since I don't use everything, I cannot be certain it all works. For example, I don't use IMAP, although some IMAP code is used for non-IMAP emails (and had to be fixed.)

There were several problems getting to this stage, of three broad categories:

1) Things that won't compile. Easy to find, not necessarily easy to fix.

2) Things that fail while Polarbar is running. Some are easy to find - things which prevent it running - some I may not have found at all.

3) Hard-coded Java version dependencies. Several things running on newer than Java 1.8 would revert to Java 1.1 behaviour.

I removed some things. The two most significant are the old note list, and the ICE browser as a selectable display option. (The ICE browser is still present for the Help system, but its security manager won't compile with JDK 10 and the older one fails when used to display emails.)

Some third-party parts, in particular Beanshell, are incompatible with Java 10. If the incompatible parts of those things are used, they will fail.

The future of JavaFX is unclear. As of Java 11 it will be removed from Java and will live on as an independent open-source project. This potentially affects the Webkit browser and now, having had to replace sun.audio for Java 10, sounds.

[Bill Wild Willy Kredentser]

> ** Reply to message from Graham Norris <chocola...@gmail.com> on Fri, 18 May 2018 03:12:23 -0700 (PDT)

I greatly appreciate your efforts, Graham. It sounds to me like the road for PBM is still long &
the end in fact is not in sight. Is there a timeline announced for when J8 will be gone & we will
all be on J10 or higher?

I must say the loss of the things you removed doesn't sound like much of a loss. I don't think
I've ever used any of those features of PBM.

[Graham Norris]

There's information about the Java roadmap on Oracle's web site, where you down load Java. It is somewhat confusing. I have discovered another new difficulty that Oracle have decided throw in the path of Java users: as of Java 11, there will be no desktop JRE from Oracle. There will be a choice of JDK (works but much bigger than most people need,) server JRE (no idea what the implications of using that are,) or OpenJDK (i.e. semi-official.)

Apart from that, I've been running a Java 10 compiled Polarbar on Java 10 for almost 2 months now. There have been no serious problems, just a few painting errors requiring a screen refresh or switch to another account and back to rectify it. This could be a PBM problem, a Java 10 problem, a video driver problem or a Windows problem: I've not investigated. An existing problem of occasional doubled mail in the inbox remains from years ago; the problem with diagnosing this is that it is highly unpredictable (I made one change which fixed it for weeks only discover it wasn't fixed at all.)

I'd be happy to make my changes and fixes available, but my Polarbar does have some changes which not everyone may appreciate, in particular removing the way it registers itself in Windows - it was broken for Windows 7 and even worse for Windows 8 and 8.1. I've not even tried with Windows 10.

Graham.

[Carlpmiller]

I’d like your changes :)

I’m slowly getting my PBM development environment up to date and obviously ran into the same basic issues you already addressed. That would be helpful to get those fixes instead of duplicating effort. 

Carl

Sent from my iPhone

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[WildWilly]

On May 1 almost THREE YEARS ago, I posted this:

Why am I back here posting to a smelly old thread like this? Because I just had this failure of
the tooltips & ignoring of the attachment icons again for the first time in probably the 3 years
it's been since I posted here. I had a faint recollection that I had posted somewhere about a
circumvention to the problem but couldn't remember the circumvention. I had quite a time finding
this thread. I think I tried about 4 searches before I finally found this thread by browsing
through the search results.

In any case, the circumvention that appeared to work for me 3 years ago did not work for me today.
What did clear the problem today was rebooting my system. This says to me (do correct me if I'm
wrong) that the issue with no tooltips & failure to launch the browser from the attachment tool bar
is not inside PBM. I would guess it's somewhere in the way Java & Windows talk to each other.
Highly annoying. But if it happens only once every 3 years, I think I can deal with it. Now all I
have to do is remember this thread 3 years from now.

WW
GO HABS GO!
Configuration: Windows 7 64-bit, AdoptOpenJDK build 11.0.7+10 (2020/4/14), PBM 1.27 dev CI-799 build 2329

[Carl Miller]

There's a layer between Java and Windows that most likely involves DLL's and we all know how well Windows manages DLL's (as in it doesn't). At some point, if some level of corruption occurs in that layer, reboot is probably the only recourse. 

Carl

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[chocola...@gmail.com]

Polarbar ignores the Windows file association mechanism for attachments. Instead, Polarbar uses what is in its account settings, and gets Java to start the program directly. There's no layer of DLLs involved here, so whatever is wrong is most likely a problem specific to one system, and that could be any number of things.

Unless this system has been unpatched for 3 years, it has most likely been patched and rebooted within the last 3 weeks. Patching Windows often brings unexpected side-effects, although failure to launch programs is not one of the known problems with this month's updates. Anti-virus updates can also introduce unwanted side effects, and they typically update more than once a day, but again, there's no widespread complaints about any of them at this time.

In any case, periodic rebooting of any desktop/laptop operating system is advisable. (There's very few operating systems of any kind which can run even six months without benefitting from a reboot - and those that do often do so by shifting workloads on the fly to other instances of themselves, so although all applications stay up, the operating system itself does not. IBM's mainframe operating system z/OS can appear to stay up forever, despite being upgraded with new versions during that time.)

Periodic restarting of applications is also advisable: there's very few which don't suffer from at least mild orphaning of resources over time. Java itself can do so, and Polarbar isn't immune to this either! Unless resources are very severely constrained it is going to take many weeks of continuous uptime for this to become noticable though.

It is also quite possible that there are hardware issues with the system. Memory and drives are prime contenders for problems, which may include running hot, which in turn may be due to cooling issues like a build up of dirt.

In short then, to me this does not sound like a problem with Polarbar, Java or Windows, but with a specific system.

Graham.

[Bill Wild Willy Kredentser]

Hi Graham. Good to see you around here.

"This system" is Windows 7, so it's been unpatched for about a year. Mind you, I did do a repair
install right around New Year & had to reinstall a certain amount of Microsoft system maintenance.
But I've turned off automatic updates. It's just a waste of time for the system to go looking for
updates that Microsoft stopped issuing over a year ago.

Anti-virus software indeed does get updated multiple times per day. But those are just signatures.
The engine itself is updated much less frequently. Such updates usually prompt for a reboot.

I do try not to reboot. Typically, I'll go several weeks between reboots. Reboots are usually due
to . . . well, I can't really say I've seen much of a pattern. Anti-virus engine updates are one
reason but system updates, being non-existent, are not. I am usually able to leave PBM running for
at least a few weeks at a time as well. This quirk with the attachment toolbar is something I had
not seen in the 3 years this thread lay fallow. Closing & reopening PBM did not clear the problem,
only a reboot did. I fully expect this to not recur for a comparable length of time.

My system typically runs perfectly between reboots. Reboots are usually due to either
configuration tweaks I might do (sound, video, USB drivers) or some application insisting I reboot.
I believe I went 104 days between reboots at one point last year. I rarely see a reason to cycle
PBM & it works fine. I normally don't see any problems with it that might make me think a
close/reopen would cure something. The closest I get is closing IMAP4 Preview because I want to
fiddle with some PBM setting. Preview & settings changes are mutually exclusive now, as I've been
told. I wish PBM's IMAP4 played better with GMail. But I posted about that in another thread.
I'm patiently waiting for development to resume on PBM so the GMail issues can be addressed.

I recently opened my system case. Can't remember exactly why. I put in a video card last year
some time but I opened it up just a few weeks ago for some reason. I was surprised by how little
dust was in there. But it's got plenty of cooling. There's a case fan in the front of the case, a
fan in the power supply, & a fan physically on the CPU. So cooling isn't an issue. I've set the
box away from the side of my desk so there's clear circulation around all 4 sides. The case stands
on feet so there's circulation underneath as well. The top has a couple of things on it but I
think there's more than adequate air circulation around the box.

I don't think there's anything specific about my system that is causing a problem. The attachment
bar thing is just a rare quirk somewhere in the bowels of the software outside PBM. If I start to
see it recur with any regularity, which I would be astounded to observe, you can be sure I'll post
here about it.

[Carl Miller]

All versions of Java have some "binary" layer associated with it in order to interact with the underlying operating system. Java on Windows most definitely uses a number of DLL's in order to work with the Windows API's. I see dozens of DLL's under the bin directory of a Windows machine running Java 14. The only thing that clears that mess out on Windows is a restart. 

Carl

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[Graham]

** Reply to message from Carl Miller <carlp...@gmail.com> on Fri, 26 Mar
2021 08:46:31 -0400

I've Java screws up its DLLs, that's its problem, not Windows. If DEP is on,
then they should effectively be incorruptible - unless malware is intruding and
bypasses it. FWIW, DEP is not on for everything by default, but I always run
with it enabled for everything, so I can't tell you if it is normally on for
java.exe, but it most likely is.

I've no idea what "clearing them out" means for this. Once the Java process has
ended, Windows will unload the DLLs Java caused to be loaded into that process.
(They, like any other file, may live in disk caches for a while, but corruption
of the caching mecahisms is likely to affect far more, and far more noticably,
than just Java DLLs.)

If you are thinking of Windows "DLL hell", that was something different
entirely. That was having multiple different versions of the same DLL in the
system at once, and that could easily lead to all sorts of horrible problems.
And did.

DLL hell has largely been solved, although the solution (SxS with manifests)
isn't exactly elegant. It has been effective to some extent since W98SE -
somewhat with W98SE, but pretty effective by the time we'd got through 2000, XP
and Vista, and up to W7. It can still get broken though, and does lead to an
apparent increase in drive usage due to use of hard links to DLLs.

Graham.

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