Wildcards in classpath do not work anymore

[j-ulrich]

It seems that since GraalJS 22.x, wildcards in the classpath do not work anymore.

Before (21.x), I got this behavior:

$ /Library/Java/JavaVirtualMachines/graalvm-ce-java17-21.3.3.1/Contents/Home/bin/js --version
GraalVM JavaScript (GraalVM CE Native 21.3.3.1)
$ /Library/Java/JavaVirtualMachines/graalvm-ce-java17-21.3.3.1/Contents/Home/bin/js --jvm "--vm.cp=/tmp/jackson/*" --vm.Dpolyglot.js.load-from-classpath=true --vm.Dpolyglot.js.load-from-url=true
> Java.type("com.fasterxml.jackson.core.JsonParser")
JavaClass[com.fasterxml.jackson.core.JsonParser]

with any later version (tested with 22.3.3, 23.0.2 and 24.0.1), I get this:

$ /Library/Java/JavaVirtualMachines/graalvm-ce-java17-22.3.3/Contents/Home/bin/js --version
GraalVM JavaScript (GraalVM CE Native 22.3.3)
$ /Library/Java/JavaVirtualMachines/graalvm-ce-java17-22.3.3/Contents/Home/bin/js --jvm "--vm.cp=/tmp/jackson/*" --vm.Dpolyglot.js.load-from-classpath=true --vm.Dpolyglot.js.load-from-url=true
> Java.type("com.fasterxml.jackson.core.JsonParser")
TypeError: Access to host class com.fasterxml.jackson.core.JsonParser is not allowed or does not exist.
    at <js> :program(<shell>:1:1:0-49)

Java.addToClasspath() with a wildcard does not work either:

> Java.addToClasspath("/tmp/jackson/*")
> Java.type("com.fasterxml.jackson.core.JsonParser")
TypeError: Access to host class com.fasterxml.jackson.core.JsonParser is not allowed or does not exist.
    at <js> :program(<shell>:3:1:0-49)

However, listing the jar files explicitly works:

$ /Library/Java/JavaVirtualMachines/graalvm-ce-java17-22.3.3/Contents/Home/bin/js --jvm "--vm.cp=/tmp/jackson/jackson-core-2.17.2.jar" --vm.Dpolyglot.js.load-from-classpath=true --vm.Dpolyglot.js.load-from-url=true
> Java.type("com.fasterxml.jackson.core.JsonParser")
JavaClass[com.fasterxml.jackson.core.JsonParser]

It seems that before 22.x, the wildcard was expanded at some point:

$ /Library/Java/JavaVirtualMachines/graalvm-ce-java17-21.3.3.1/Contents/Home/bin/js --jvm "--vm.cp=/tmp/jackson/*" --vm.Dpolyglot.js.load-from-classpath=true --vm.Dpolyglot.js.load-from-url=true
> java.lang.System.getProperty("java.class.path")
/Library/Java/JavaVirtualMachines/graalvm-ce-java17-21.3.3.1/Contents/Home/lib/graalvm/graaljs-launcher.jar:/Library/Java/JavaVirtualMachines/graalvm-ce-java17-21.3.3.1/Contents/Home/lib/graalvm/launcher-common.jar:/tmp/jackson/jackson-core-2.17.2.jar

After 22.x, the wildcard appears in the classpath as-is:

$ /Library/Java/JavaVirtualMachines/graalvm-ce-java17-22.3.3/Contents/Home/bin/js --jvm "--vm.cp=/tmp/jackson/*" --vm.Dpolyglot.js.load-from-classpath=true --vm.Dpolyglot.js.load-from-url=true                      
> java.lang.System.getProperty("java.class.path")
/Library/Java/JavaVirtualMachines/graalvm-ce-java17-22.3.3/Contents/Home/languages/js/bin/../../../lib/graalvm/graaljs-launcher.jar:/Library/Java/JavaVirtualMachines/graalvm-ce-java17-22.3.3/Contents/Home/languages/js/bin/../../../lib/graalvm/launcher-common.jar:/tmp/jackson/*

It does not seem to be a problem with GraalVM in general because when printing out the java.class.path in a Java program, it still gets expanded (the program simply prints java.lang.System.getProperty("java.class.path")):

$ /Library/Java/JavaVirtualMachines/graalvm-ce-java17-22.3.3/Contents/Home/bin/java -cp '.:/tmp/jackson/*' GraalClassLoadTest
.:/tmp/jackson/jackson-core-2.17.2.jar
$ /Library/Java/JavaVirtualMachines/graalvm-jdk-17.0.11+7.1/Contents/Home/bin/java -cp '.:/tmp/jackson/*' GraalClassLoadTest
.:/tmp/jackson/jackson-core-2.17.2.jar

[j-ulrich]

Tested it on macOS and in GraalVM Docker containers.

[woess]

Confirmed. I think this was caused by the switch to thin language launchers. It was kind of working by accident before.

You can work around it by doing the expansion yourself (via command line (shell) or Java.addToClasspath + host interop). Or you could try to use module path.

We'll probably implement launcher support for this eventually, but it's not a priority for us right now.