The jls distribution has the directory structure shown below.

You can run jls without setting the PATH variable. If you plane to use jls anywhere you might consider to add its root folder on the system path.

If you need to run the 32-bit distribution on a Linux 64-bit system then you need the 32-bit libraries.

apt-get install ia32-libs

The command line is the following.

jls [options] target [args...]

The target could be a script filename or a classname. For both cases the target must be available in the extension or the script path list.

The options include:

The separation character could be ; or : depending on the operating system.

By default the standalone jls bootstrap script does not enable garbage collection. If your application generates a lot of object you must manage garbage collection. The default way to enable garbage collection is to set the system properties jls.gcDelay to a value in milliseconds.

jls -Djls.gcDelay=5000 myApp.js

A periodic execution of the garbage collector does not fit to all kind of applications. You must also consider calling the garbage collector directly in your application.

System.gc();

At startup jls executables look for an initialisation file named with the executable name without the extension (jls.ini for example), if such a file exists then it content is used as the default arguments. The executables jls and jlsw are lightweight executables, just calling the jls native library. Within this feature it is possible to create self executables by copying the default executable using the name of your tool. Depending of your tool you must choose the jls or jlsw executable.

By example if you have created the xyz tool then copy jls to xyz then create the initialisation file xyz.ini with your class or script name in it. To launch your tool you just have to launch the xyz executable.

To use the web browser jls library, you could use the browser.js demo script, this script gives access to the runtime and the test archive files.

jls browser.js

In order to use the jls framework, you must have access to the jls web runtime library (wb/rt.zip) and load the bootstrap script like the following.

<script src="/rt/bootstrap.js" type="text/javascript"></script> 

To avoid loading each files separately you could concatenate several files into one and load it using a script tag. The full jls runtime stack is provided in a single file wb/jls.js including the bootstrapping.

You can set arguments and properties by using the jlsOptions variable before to load the bootstrap script, by example you can set the log level and specify the script path.

<script type="text/javascript"> 
<!-- 
jlsOptions = { 
    properties : { 
        'jls.script.path' : '/rt;/test', 
        'jls.logger.logLevel' : 'trace' 
    } 
}; 
//--> 
</script> 
<script src="/rt/bootstrap.js" type="text/javascript"></script> 

At startup the Jls native engine look for a bootstrap script named by default bootstrap.js. The default runtime archive contains such a bootstrap script that loads the jls namespace and base lang classes: jls.lang.Exception, jls.lang.ClassLoader. It also extends JavaScript objects with the prototype framework.

Native libraries can be loaded using the default loader. The library name must be provided without the extension ( jls_io for jls_io.dll). The library file must be present in the library or extension paths.

Runtime.loadLibrary('libName');

By example, the native io library creates the mkDir() function in the io namespace. This function can be access like the following: _native.io.mkDir().

The package jls.jsunit contains classes for unit testing. A default test runner can be used to launch a test case class.

jls jls/jsunit/TestRunner myPackage/SomeTest

The jls.jsunit.TestCase class can be extend to create test cases. The jls.jsunit.Assert class contains functions to check the unit tests.

define(['jls/lang/Class', 'jls/jsunit/Assert', 'jls/jsunit/TestCase'],
function (Class, Assert, TestCase) { 
  return Class.create(TestCase, 
  { 
    testSomething : function() { 
        jls.jsunit.Assert.assertEquals(2, 1 + 1); 
        jls.jsunit.Assert.assertTrue(true); 
    }
  });
});

The package jls.gui provides an abstract graphical user interface library. Each graphical component is a jls.gui.Element an element is created with two arguments: a parameters object and an optional parent. The parameters object can have the following properties.