From: Brian Candler <B.Candler@...>
Date: 2007-10-22T16:50:28+09:00
Subject: REXML (1.8.6-p110) backwards compatibility problem with rcov

When I upgraded my Ubuntu 6.06.1 system from its stock ruby-1.8.4 to
ruby-1.8.6-p110, I found that the previously working rcov-0.8.0.2 was
raising REXML exceptions when it tried to generate its output (*)

I needed to make a couple of patches to REXML to fix this. The first patch
is because rcov passes Fixnums as attribute values, e.g.

       table_(:cellpadding => 0, :cellspacing => 0, :align => "right")

This could have been fixed at the rcov side, but since it *did* used to work
with rexml, I consider this a backwards-compatibility failure. The fix is
trivial:

--- rexml/text.rb.orig	2007-10-22 08:00:04.000000000 +0100
+++ rexml/text.rb	2007-10-22 08:00:33.000000000 +0100
@@ -286,7 +286,7 @@
     EREFERENCE = /&(?!#{Entity::NAME};)/
     # Escapes all possible entities
     def Text::normalize( input, doctype=nil, entity_filter=nil )
-      copy = input
+      copy = input.to_s
       # Doing it like this rather than in a loop improves the speed
       #copy = copy.gsub( EREFERENCE, '&amp;' )
       copy = copy.gsub( "&", "&amp;" )

(Note that there are other places in this file which might benefit from a
to_s as well)

The second is almost certainly a bug in REXML: it's a misnamed local
variable.

--- rexml/document.rb.orig	2007-10-22 08:02:36.000000000 +0100
+++ rexml/document.rb	2007-10-22 08:03:01.000000000 +0100
@@ -183,7 +183,7 @@
         output = Output.new( output, xml_decl.encoding )
       end
       formatter = if indent > -1
-          if transitive
+          if trans
             REXML::Formatters::Transitive.new( indent, ie_hack )
           else
             REXML::Formatters::Pretty.new( indent, ie_hack )

After these changes, rcov seems to run happily.

I wasn't sure where best to post this problem and its solution: ruby-core
(since REXML is in the ruby standard library), the REXML home site, or the
rcov home site. So I'm posting it here instead :-)

Regards,

Brian.

(*) The exception I saw initially was:

/usr/local/lib/ruby/1.8/rexml/text.rb:292:in `normalize': private method `gsub' called for 0:Fixnum (NoMethodError)
        from /usr/local/lib/ruby/1.8/rexml/element.rb:1084:in `[]='
        from /usr/local/lib/ruby/1.8/rexml/element.rb:586:in `add_attribute'
        from (eval):490:in `table_'
        from (eval):490:in `each'
        from (eval):490:in `table_'
        from (eval):490:in `each'
        from (eval):490:in `table_'
        from /usr/local/lib/ruby/gems/1.8/gems/rcov-0.8.0.2/lib/rcov/report.rb:702:in `format_overview'
         ... 61 levels...

After I fixed this by adding to_s in Text::normalize, I got

/usr/local/lib/ruby/1.8/rexml/document.rb:186:in `write': undefined local variable or method `transitive' for <UNDEFINED> ... </>:REXML::Document (NameError)
        from (eval):93:in `pretty'
        from /usr/local/lib/ruby/gems/1.8/gems/rcov-0.8.0.2/lib/rcov/report.rb:727:in `format_overview'
        from /usr/local/lib/ruby/gems/1.8/gems/rcov-0.8.0.2/lib/rcov/report.rb:758:in `create_index'
        from (eval):104:in `create'
        from (eval):80:in `tracking_additions'
        from (eval):103:in `create'
        from (eval):372:in `x_'
        from /usr/local/lib/ruby/gems/1.8/gems/rcov-0.8.0.2/lib/rcov/report.rb:758:in `create_index'
         ... 21 levels...