JEP 372: Remove the Nashorn JavaScript Engine

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  • February 27, 2020
Technology

Jim Laskey, Director of Software Development at Oracle Corporation, has put forward a candidate Java enhancement proposal to remove the long-deprecated Nashorn JavaScript engine, APIs, and jjs tool.

JEP 372: Remove the Nashorn JavaScript Engine

In JEP 372, Laskey writes:

The Nashorn JavaScript engine was first incorporated into JDK 8 via JEP 174 as a replacement for the Rhino scripting engine. When it was released, it was a complete implementation of the ECMAScript-262 5.1 standard.

With the rapid pace at which ECMAScript language constructs, along with APIs, are adapted and modified, we have found Nashorn challenging to maintain.

This latter comment is a sentiment mirrored by some in the community.

Details

The aim is to remove two JDK modules: jdk.scripting.nashorn, which contains the jdk.nashorn.api.scripting and jdk.nashorn.api.tree packages, and jdk.scripting.nashorn.shell, containing the jjs tool. Laskey further states that it is not his intention to touch the javax.script API.

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The Nashorn JavaScript engine was deprecated in JDK 11, released in September 2018. As such, Laskey believes developers who use it have had ample time to make alternative arrangements, and that since nobody has “expressed a clear desire to maintain Nashorn in JDK 14 and beyond”, the decision to remove it makes complete sense.

However, some members of the community are less than pleased by this suggestion. User BlueGoliath on reddit wrote: “Not nearly of a positive action as many think it is, IMO. If Oracle/JDK developers are going to drop features like JavaFX and Nashorn like that then people are just going to ignore otherwise centralized and dependable baked-in features for potentially worse off third-party ones. Java has historically been known for being highly backwards compatible and this hurts that perception.”

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At the time of writing, there are no responses on the jdk-dev mailing list debating the merits of this proposal, so we’ll have to wait to find out what the JDK developers thing.

Do you have a strong feeling one way or another? Let us know in the comments. Otherwise, why not check out the JEP in all its glory here.

The post JEP 372: Remove the Nashorn JavaScript Engine appeared first on JAXenter.

Source : JAXenter

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