[Scilab-Dev] Scilab GUI and adv-cli fail to launch with java 9

[Atri Bhattacharya]

Hi,
After several patches to fix building against java 9, I have been
finally able to get scilab 6.0.1 building on openSUSE Tumbleweed.
However, during run time, I now see a ClassNotFoundError, as follows:
--------------------
:~> SCIVERBOSE=1 scilab
SCILABBIN : scilab-bin
DISABLE_JAVA_DETECTION : 0
SCILAB_MODE : gui
OS : Linux
MODEL : x86_64
IS_SCILAB_BINARY : 0
Using specified vm: /usr/lib64/jvm/java
JAVA_HOME : /usr/lib64/jvm/java
SCI : /usr/share/scilab/
SCIBIN : /usr/bin/scilab-bin
PATH :
/usr/share/scilab/:/usr/share/scilab//bin:/usr/bin:/home/badshah400/bin
:/usr/local/bin:/usr/bin:/bin:/usr/lib/mit/bin:/usr/lib/mit/sbin
CLASSPATH :
/usr/share/scilab//modules/core/jar/org.scilab.modules.core.jar
EGL_DRIVER : 
LD_LIBRARY_PATH :
/usr/lib64/jvm/java/lib/:/usr/lib64/jvm/java/lib/server/:/usr/lib64/jvm
/java/lib/native_threads/
DOCBOOK : /usr/share/xml/docbook/stylesheet/nwalsh/current/
WARNING: An illegal reflective access operation has occurred
WARNING: Illegal reflective access by
org.scilab.modules.jvm.LibraryPath
(file:/usr/share/scilab/modules/jvm/jar/org.scilab.modules.jvm.jar) to
field java.lang.ClassLoader.sys_paths
WARNING: Please consider reporting this to the maintainers of
org.scilab.modules.jvm.LibraryPath
WARNING: Use --illegal-access=warn to enable warnings of further
illegal reflective access operations
WARNING: All illegal access operations will be denied in a future
release
Could not access to the Main Scilab Class:
Exception in thread "main" java.lang.NoClassDefFoundError:
org/scilab/modules/core/Scilab
Caused by: java.lang.ClassNotFoundException:
org.scilab.modules.core.Scilab
	at
java.base/jdk.internal.loader.BuiltinClassLoader.loadClass(BuiltinClass
Loader.java:582)
	at
java.base/jdk.internal.loader.ClassLoaders$AppClassLoader.loadClass(Cla
ssLoaders.java:185)
	at
java.base/java.lang.ClassLoader.loadClass(ClassLoader.java:496)

Scilab cannot create Scilab Java Main-Class (we have not been able to
find the main Scilab class. Check if the Scilab and thirdparty packages
are available).
--------------

All patches are available at [1], and also documented on
http://bugzilla.scilab.org/show_bug.cgi?id=15328
where unfortunately, I have not seen the needle move much over the
recent days.

Scilab does work with java 1.8.0 (have to adapt the JRE paths
appropriately in bin/scilab); however, as soon as java 9 is used the
above error is manifested. If someone can help fix this issue, that
will be very helpful.

openSUSE uses Java 9 by default now, which means as of now scilab is
badly broken -- only scilab-cli works -- on openSUSE Tumbleweed and
soon to be released Leap 15.0. Unless Scilab's compatibility issues are
fixed, we will have to drop it from the distro unfortunately. 

Thanks and best wishes.

[1] https://build.opensuse.org/package/show/home:badshah400:branches:science/scilab

-- 
Atri Bhattacharya
Wed 21 Feb 13:18:49 CET 2018

Sent from openSUSE Tumbleweed on my laptop.