[ANN] JRuby 1.5.5 Released

[Thomas E Enebo]

The JRuby community is pleased to announce the release of JRuby 1.5.5.

(Note: Due to a showstopper bug found after the release of the
jruby-jars gem and
the inability to remove gem releases from rubygems.org we have skipped
from 1.5.3 to 1.5.5. The 1.5.5 release is the same release that would have
been 1.5.4 had we been able to re-release jruby-jars.)

- Homepage: [http://www.jruby.org/](http://www.jruby.org/)
- Download: [http://www.jruby.org/download](http://www.jruby.org/download)

JRuby 1.5.5 is a minor follow-up release to address problems executing
some commands on Windows, a couple of Marshalling discrepancies with MRI, a=
nd
a few other random production-affecting issues. We also improved the outpu=
t
and accuracy of --profile (try it out). All users of JRuby 1.5.3 are
recommended to upgrade to 1.5.5.

### 1.5.5 Issues Resolved:
- JRUBY-4766 Updated jaffl for YourKit compatibility
- JRUBY-4865 Ant.load_from_ant is broken on Windows
- JRUBY-4940 Cucumber Japanese example raises exception on JRuby
- JRUBY-5064 Marshalled ruby hash gets loaded incorrectly
- JRUBY-5110 kernel.system not working in 1.5.3 on Windows
- JRUBY-5112 Cannot run 'jruby -S rake test' for Rails project on
Windows in 1.5.3
- JRUBY-5122 Webrick socket.readline causes 100% cpu usage
- JRUBY-5123 Marshal dump format error and inconsistencies with MRI
- JRUBY-5132 java.awt.Component.instance_of?() expects 2 args=09
- JRUBY-5133 Backtick operator does not work on Windows in 1.5.3
- JRUBY-5138 requiring 'ffi' defines class method :error on Module
- JRUBY-5168 Can't include interfaces in a synchronized class


--=20
blog: http://blog.enebo.com=A0 =A0 =A0=A0 twitter: tom_enebo
mail: (e-mail address removed)

 

[Joel VanderWerf]

We also improved the output
and accuracy of --profile (try it out).

What output are we supposed to see? I just installed 1.5.5 and --profile
doesn't seem to generate anything.

$ jruby -v
jruby 1.5.5 (ruby 1.8.7 patchlevel 249) (2010-11-10 4bd4200) (Java
HotSpot(TM) 64-Bit Server VM 1.6.0_22) [amd64-java]

 

[Charles Oliver Nutter]

What output are we supposed to see? I just installed 1.5.5 and --profile
doesn't seem to generate anything.

$ jruby -v
jruby 1.5.5 (ruby 1.8.7 patchlevel 249) (2010-11-10 4bd4200) (Java
HotSpot(TM) 64-Bit Server VM 1.6.0_22) [amd64-java]

Yeah, sorry about that. There's an update to the jruby-launcher gem
(our native executable) that has not gotten released yet. If you like
you can build it yourself from the repo at
github.com/vvs/jruby-launcher (make ; cp jruby <jruby home>/bin) to
get the new --profile flag.

Catching up from the conference backlog these past couple months

- Charlie

 

[Nick Sieger]

What output are we supposed to see? I just installed 1.5.5 and --profile
doesn't seem to generate anything.

$ jruby -v
jruby 1.5.5 (ruby 1.8.7 patchlevel 249) (2010-11-10 4bd4200) (Java
HotSpot(TM) 64-Bit Server VM 1.6.0_22) [amd64-java]

Yeah, sorry about that. There's an update to the jruby-launcher gem
(our native executable) that has not gotten released yet. If you like
you can build it yourself from the repo at
github.com/vvs/jruby-launcher (make ; cp jruby <jruby home>/bin) to
get the new --profile flag.

Catching up from the conference backlog these past couple months

Actually, all you need to do is "gem install jruby-launcher" to get
the new version.

/Nick

 

[Joel VanderWerf]

Actually, all you need to do is "gem install jruby-launcher" to get
the new version.

Thanks! Should this be installed with MRI gem, or jruby gem ?

 

[Nick Sieger]

Thanks! Should this be installed with MRI gem, or jruby gem ?

JRuby! It will compile the native launcher for your system and install
it on top of the existing shell script in $JRUBY_HOME/bin.

/Nick

 

[Joel VanderWerf]

JRuby! It will compile the native launcher for your system and install
it on top of the existing shell script in $JRUBY_HOME/bin.

Works now, thanks!

I'm looking at the output from both --profile and --sample. It seems
that --profile measures only jruby methods, and --sample measures only
java functions. (Or maybe --sample would show some of the jruby methods
if they were taking enough time to be observed at a tick. My program is
much more heavily bottlenecked in the java side at the moment.)

Is there any possibility of --profile instrumenting both jruby and java
code?

 

[Charles Oliver Nutter]

I'm looking at the output from both --profile and --sample. It seems that
--profile measures only jruby methods, and --sample measures only java
functions. (Or maybe --sample would show some of the jruby methods if the= y
were taking enough time to be observed at a tick. My program is much more
heavily bottlenecked in the java side at the moment.)

Is there any possibility of --profile instrumenting both jruby and java
code?

Currently, no. Because Ruby dispatches differently than Java,
including both in the same profile is at least difficult, and maybe
impossible. Liken it to wanting to show profile results for both Ruby
and C (or C++, C#, ObjC) in other implementations, when Ruby method
dispatch is actually implemented *in* those native languages. The two
worlds are largely separate.

However...

If you are able to force all Ruby code to compile before invocation
(using -X+C to force all files to compile or -Xjit.threshold=3D1 to
force all methods to compile on first invocation) normal Java
profiling tools will show the compiled Ruby method bodies alongside
regular Java method bodies. Be forewarned, however...as with any C or
C++-based implementation that JITs Ruby code to native code, the
resulting method are "mangled" a bit, and you'll have to do some
manual chewing to interpret them. But at least you can use any of the
dozens of Java profiling tools and show results for both Ruby and Java
at the same time. If there's interest, I could try to do a screencast
of how to do this with various JVM profilers (such as the built-in
-J-Xrunhprof:cpu=3Dtimes):

=E2=9E=94 jruby -J-Xrunhprof:cpu=3Dtimes -e "def foo; a =3D 0; while a < 10=
00; a
+=3D 1; end; end; 100.times { foo }"
Dumping CPU usage by timing methods ... done.

Result, buried in a java.hprof.txt file: https://gist.github.com/728666

Here, the "ruby.__dash_e__.method__0$RUBY$foo" method is the jitted
version of the "foo" method defined above.

Now, on JRuby 1.6, it may be possible to take this mangled output and
at least do a cleanup pass (because we have standardized the mangling
a bit better), but the profiling output is very tool-specific...so
de-mangling would have to happen on a per-tool basis

Another option would be the JXInsight tool
(http://www.jinspired.com/products/jxinsight/), which has builtin
support for profiling Ruby (and may make it possible to combine Ruby
and Java results in the same output. It is, however, a commercial
tool.

- Charlie