Guus der Kinderen <[email protected]> writes:

> Hi Simon,
>
> Although I do believe that a separate project for the java code has
> considerable benefits, I wonder if it's worth doing that, given the
> maturity of the entire project. It's decades old, and the foundation on
> which it is based is frozen. Does splitting it up now make sense?

Probably not - but I wanted to mention the possibility.  After removing
the *.JAR file from the 'make dist' tarball, most of the Java stuff
doesn't cause a lot of problems any more.  It does add complexity to
normal releases, though, since I need to have Java etc installed and
updating javadoc pages takes some time.

> Then again, from a cursory glance at libidn2, that doesn't have _any_ Java
> port right now? Establishing a distinct Java project is perhaps something
> that could be applied to both.

Libidn (including the Java port) is IDNA2003 so really ancient.  I would
be surprised if there weren't multiple IDNA2008 Java implementations
around?  If not, doing one would be nice, but it is not a trivial job.
I wouldn't want to add that to Libidn2 though, let's keep it separate if
you or anyone wants to work on that.

/Simon

> So many pet projects though...
>
> What do you think?
>
>  - Guus
>
> On Sun, Jul 12, 2026 at 8:55 PM Simon Josefsson <[email protected]> wrote:
>
>> Guus der Kinderen <[email protected]> writes:
>>
>> > Hi Simon,
>> >
>> >> No worries - getting things published definitely has priority.
>> >
>> > I pressed 'publish' moments ago. \o/
>>
>> Great!
>>
>> > Though your reply did make me look more closely at something, and I don't
>> > entirely like what I found.
>> >
>> > What struck me is that between 1.15 and 1.44 there are a great many
>> changes
>> > to the project, and essentially none of them touch the Java port. C-code
>> > surely is quite different from the Java code, and the code is punned to
>> > Unicode 3.2 so has little reason to move - but still: that's an awful lot
>> > of non-Java-change releases.
>>
>> I don't think there has been any significant algorithm-related changes
>> since pretty much forever though.
>>
>> > It makes me doubt my earlier assumption that the Java port isn't a
>> > frozen-but-faithful twin of the C library; I'm now more inclined to
>> believe
>> > that it's an independent ~2004 implementation by a different author, that
>> > may have drifted.
>>
>> That is right -- it was a contribution, and what little Java I ever know
>> it has probably fallen out of fashion.
>>
>> > So perhaps, some of those releases probably *should* have touched the
>> > Java side?
>>
>> Hard to tell -- but not certainly.
>>
>> > I've still published 1.44 today. What's on Central is 1.15 from 2009,
>> > unsigned and without sources, so this is a clear improvement regardless.
>> > But it maybe  should not be the last word. What do you think?
>>
>> Improvements are always welcome, so maybe your update will spur some
>> interest.  Possibly all of the Java code could be moved into a separate
>> git project, I think ~20 years ago multi-language projects made sense
>> but today I think it is just a pain to have to coordinate independent
>> implementations in a single release.
>>
>> /Simon
>>
>> > Regards,
>> >
>> >   Guus
>> >
>> > On Sun, Jul 12, 2026 at 5:28 PM Simon Josefsson <[email protected]>
>> wrote:
>> >
>> >> Guus der Kinderen <[email protected]> writes:
>> >>
>> >> > Hi Simon,
>> >> >
>> >> >> Yes I am happy if you can sign artifacts and make the upload.
>> >> >
>> >> > Thanks!
>> >> >
>> >> >> Are they reproducible?
>> >> >
>> >> > Not as things stand. The jar and javadoc tooling both embed
>> timestamps.
>> >> > Fixable, but I'd rather leave it out of scope for now and get 1.44
>> out.
>> >> >
>> >> > What I built: the Java code from the 1.44 tarball, unmodified,
>> recompiled
>> >> > with Java 8 for compatibility.
>> >>
>> >> No worries - getting things published definitely has priority.  I don't
>> >> know about Java reproducible artifacts, or if anyone in the Central/Java
>> >> community cares.
>> >>
>> >> >> I suspect Java people aren't using *.JAR's from GNU tarballs, but get
>> >> >> things through Maven or other sites, though.
>> >> >
>> >> > That's exactly right, and the current situation isn't very good:
>> Central
>> >> > has only 1.15 (2009) and 0.6.5 (2006):
>> >> > https://mvnrepository.com/artifact/org.gnu.inet/libidn People can
>> route
>> >> > around it with private repositories (e.g.
>> >> >
>> https://igniterealtime.org/archiva/repository/maven/org/gnu/inet/libidn/
>> >> ),
>> >> > which is unsigned and unofficial and not a real fix - and likely
>> outdated
>> >> > too. Not having it in Central will effectively make it unavailable to
>> >> most
>> >> > developers. Getting 1.44 onto Central should sort it.
>> >>
>> >> Yay!
>> >>
>> >> /Simon
>> >>
>>

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