New JRuby Syntax for Importing Java Classes

We've added a cleaner, simpler syntax to JRuby for including Java classes into a given namespace. It stemmed from a response of mine to a user on the JRuby mailing lists, and has been committed to trunk already. Almost everyone on the list agreed this new syntax is better.

Tom sums up the history of JRuby's Java include syntax in his blog post, but here's the executive summary.

Where before you would use this:

include_class "java.util.ArrayList"
include_class("java.lang.String") { |p,n| "J" + n }

You now can simply do this:

ArrayList = java.util.ArrayList
JString = java.lang.String

And this syntax also works directly; no assignment to a constant is required:

class MyClass < java.awt.event.ActionListener
...
end

Pretty slick, if you ask me.