Need to specify -Dfile.encoding when executing jar created by Warbler

[rob99]

I have a simple script that reads a XML file and writes a CSV file. My scripts all have #encoding:utf-8 at the top and I explicitly set the external encoding on all reads and writes as UTF-8.

Everything works as expected.

I packaged my script using Warbler and deployed it to the network for my colleagues. Unfortunately the CSV files being generated by the packaged jar were incorrect -- various non-ASCII characters were being munged.

It took me a while to work out that the fix was to specify the file.encoding as a JVM option. E.g.

java -Dfile.encoding=UTF-8 -jar myscript.jar 

In other words, there was differing behavior between my raw (j)ruby script and the Warbler package of same.

I'm not sure if this is a bug in Warbler, or JRuby, or not a bug at all, but I thought I'd post this here for discussion and in case somebody else has the same problem.

Luckily for me, I wanted UTF-8 all around. I don't know what I would do if I wanted a mixture of encodings among source files, input file and output file. Ruby would allow this, but how would I set file.encoding?

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[mooreniemi]

@rob99 I'm disappointed to see no maintainers replying to you. I thought I'd point out, in case it helps folks, that the -Dfile.encoding=UTF-8 is the same as Java's properties in general. Usually you can have a separate properties file and in Java code you can read that file, for instance, by using user.home + the rest of the path. It'd be helpful to know if and when warbler tries to pick those up, or otherwise bridge the gap between the Ruby "way" to do settings (env vars) and the Java "way" which is via properties.