Fixing Hessian Flex 3.2.0 References

If you're using Hessian Flex 3.2.0 and you'd like to fix the problem with references, the following one-line fix seems to do the job for me:

$ svn diff
Index: src/main/flex/hessian/io/Hessian2Input.as
===================================================================
--- src/main/flex/hessian/io/Hessian2Input.as (revision 1172)
+++ src/main/flex/hessian/io/Hessian2Input.as (working copy)
@@ -129,9 +129,10 @@
     public override function init(di:IDataInput):void
     {
       _di = di;
       _buffer = new ByteArray();
       _offset = 0;
       _length = 0;
+      _refs = null;
     }

Basically, HessianOperation hangs on to a Hessian2Input class between invocations, and calls init() to clear out the state before using the class for another invocation. The init() doesn't currently clear the reference cache. By setting _refs to null, you clear the cache and Hessian2Input will simply instantiate a new array in its place if and when it needs to do so.

Caucho's OSGi Pains

Earlier this month, I commented on Atlassian's OSGi experiences, and how it seemed that most of these experiences recount the pain of getting up-close-and-personal with OSGi. I've just noticed that Caucho has a similar tale of woe; they considered using OSGi within their application server and eventually rejected it, at least for the time being.

Now, you could of course argue that this a way for Caucho to explain the lack of OSGi support within their application server. I'm not trying to position their tale in any way. I don't have enough OSGi experience to agree or disagree with the points they raise, I'm just trying to synthesize from the experiences of others, and that seems to come down to this:

If you read detailed adventures of people's experiences with OSGi, it seems to come with a fair amount of pain, so keep that in mind when you're looking at OSGi for your own purposes.