remove j-interop and jcifs from core?

[jn...@cloudbees.com]

Hi all,

the j-interop and jcifs libraries only appear to be used for very narrow use cases

1. The ability to install Jenkins as a service[1] when it is running (by java -jar) on a windows machine

2. for installing windows agents via dcom etc (which is deprecated[2])

There are a couple of uses of jcifs (some accidental usage of Base64), other valid interactions.  I am proposing to not detach jcifs but remove it and switch accidental usage to javas own Base64.  Publish-over-cifs-plugin attempts wo use jcifs-ng[3]however does not set the plugin-first classloader so will get the legacy classes but would otherwise be unaffected with the removal (it would behave as intended!) I could not find other legitimate uses of jcifs.

What do you think?

Regards

/James

[1] https://github.com/jenkinsci/windows-slaves-plugin/blob/bc4648caf770590e7361e8bbc8cd42a4d9a0bde0/src/main/java/hudson/os/windows/ManagedWindowsServiceLauncher.java

[2] https://github.com/jenkinsci/windows-slaves-plugin#notice-of-deprecation

[3] https://github.com/jenkinsci/publish-over-cifs-plugin/blob/658afe24349327680d44d413e2ed17fa8bad177b/pom.xml#L88-L98

[jn...@cloudbees.com]

> 1. The ability to install Jenkins as a service[1] when it is running (by java -jar) on a windows machine

I forgot to mention - which potentially valid - I would argue that the user should just download the MSI package for this instead, afterall we do not attempt to install a systemd file when running on Linux.

/James

[Jesse Glick]

On Mon, Sep 18, 2023 at 7:22 AM 'jn...@cloudbees.com' via Jenkins Developers <jenkin...@googlegroups.com> wrote:

The ability to install Jenkins as a service[1] when it is running (by java -jar) on a windows machine

I forgot to mention - which potentially valid - I would argue that the user should just download the MSI package for this instead, afterall we do not attempt to install a systemd file when running on Linux.

We did used to do just that (and analogously on various platforms), but only when running from Java Web Start. If this dependency was only needed for windows-slave-installer-module then it is obsolete as of https://github.com/jenkinsci/jenkins/pull/6543

[Basil Crow]

On Mon, Sep 18, 2023 at 4:19 AM 'jn...@cloudbees.com' via Jenkins Developers <jenkin...@googlegroups.com> wrote:
>
> What do you think?

I think this is a great idea. I am doing something similar for the old XML Pull Parser 3rd Edition libraries in jenkinsci/jenkins#8503.

[Mark Waite]

On Monday, September 18, 2023 at 3:59:40 PM UTC-6 Basil wrote:

On Mon, Sep 18, 2023 at 4:19 AM James Nord  wrote:
>
> What do you think?

I think this is a great idea. I am doing something similar for the old XML Pull Parser 3rd Edition libraries in jenkinsci/jenkins#8503.

I agree wholeheartedly.  Install as a service on Windows is best handled by the MSI installer.

Mark Waite