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Alexander Shvets · Guest

his release includes new features and new supported languages. The full
list of
supported languages include:

- Javascript (1.6R4);
- Groovy (1.0);
- Beanshell (2.0b5);
- Jelly (1.0);
- JRuby (0.9. Cool

;
- Jython (2.2b1);
- Pnuts (1.1);
- Jaskell (1.0);
- JScheme (7.2);
- TCL (1.4.0);
- AWK (0.14);
- f3 (?.?);
- Fortress (?.?);
- Scala (2.3.3);
- Janino (2.5.5);
- Scriptella (0.7);
- Velocity (1.4);
- Freemarker (2.3.9);
- Ant (1.7.0);
- Maven (2.0.5).

What is it: Scriptlandia? It's the effort to build environment on top of
JVM. The user don't have
to worry how to install or configure libraries for different scripting
languages. It will be done
automatically at installation and/or at execution time.

This project is useful for doing fast prototyping in your favorite
language without spending time
on installation/configuration (aka CoC). It's also good for building
simple command-line tools.

How is it different from, say scripting-for-java project?

1. It's not tied to Java 6 platform. You can use Java 5; it's possible
to have this code ready for java 1.4.

2. You can specify dependencies for the language in the form of maven 2
project file. As the result, these dependencies will be downloaded
automatically from the server to your local repository.

3. It's easy to build environment in which scripts are aware of each
other. It can be done by adding new dependencies (not through ancient
CLASSPATH approach).

4. Language gear is available through the file extension. Thanks to jdic
project, corresponding
gear will be executed, based on extension.

5. Based on extension, different convenient programs-launchers can be
assigned to existing extensions like jar, war etc. As an example, if jar
represents micro-edition application, suitable launcher will be started.
In another example we can associate jar file with ant script and extend
available commands for jar file (now execute command only, see jdk
documentation), but everything whatever could be expressed as ant target.

6. New extensions are introduced: .sl (scriptlandia) and .cw
(classworld). They are used for starting arbitrary programs with correct
dependencies specified.

7. Ant and Maven scripts are first-class citizens: you can interpret
them as another scripting languages.

8. Scriptlandia is integrated with Nailgun server. It means that for
simple scripts you can keep
JVM in-memory, drastically reducing start-up time for running scripts.