CODEWITHSUNDEEP
grailsgroovy
Martin Norlin
Martin Norlin

Reputation: 11

Compile groovy files using very old groovy compiler

I'm trying to help a customer with this old (2010) application built with Grails 1.3.1. It's a part of a larger system. We have the source code and a number of running instances (including a test rig), but the original developers are long gone. The customer needs to make a really small change to the application. It's in just one Groovy file. I've managed to open the project in Eclipse (Luna) and installed GGTS. It looks OK, and Eclipse outputs class files to the target-eclipse directory.

The plan is to just replace the affected class file directly on the test machine running the application. Problem is: it doesn't work. It runs on Tomcat6, but I can't find anything relevant in the logs (which is also strange) - the application just doesn’t start if I replace this one class file. My best guess is that it's because the Groovy compiler on my machine (used by GGTS) is much newer than that on the test rig. Grails 1.3.1 contains groovy-all-1.7.2.jar, which I believe is the same as the compiler version, and I can't find it as a downloadable tool any more, or as a Eclipse plugin (it only supports version 2.X and later).

Any suggestions? Can I somehow compile the file using the old version of groovy in the jar? Quick and dirty fixes are welcome. They want to avoid upgrading the running systems, because that will probably require a lot of work.

I've never used Groovy or Grails before but I'm a fairly experienced Java developer.

Upvotes: 0

Views: 512

Answers (1)

blackdrag
blackdrag

Reputation: 6518

While a class compiled with Groovy 1.7.2 may run just fine with a current Groovy, the other way around is not guaranteed. I suggest not to use GGTS, especially not for such an early version.

Groovy currently has a problem with a download location for old distributions, but we are working on that. You could of course get the maven jar from maven central and take the command line scripts from the github repository or even use it to try building the distribution yourself using ant dist, or just ant install for a local install.

And finally of course there is the option of using the jar from the grails zip itself, defectus gave the link for this in the comments already

Upvotes: 1

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