Project Overview

TopCoder Competition Engine is the base system for running Single Round Matches (SRM) and Marathon Matches.

As JDK 8 is release to use, we'd like explore the way to upgrade it for our competition engine, and experiment with the new features provided JDK 8 including general checking if any existing feature will be broken.

Competition Task Overview

This contest is going to explore the way to upgrade Java languge to JDK 8 for our competition engine, and experiment with the new features provided JDK 8 including general checking if the new features will break anything.

Install JDK 8

The installation will only be applied for farm processor (under farm account). 

For this contest, two VMs will be created assigned to each competitors,

• Arena VM  - a VM with all services related to comptititon engine installed, but it can only run 32bit application, so to JDK.
• CentOS 64bit VM - a VM with root access, where you can install JDK 8 x64 version, and testing with.

You are expected to do the installation and testing with two VMs.

Code Update and Analysis

In the previous upgrade to Java 7, we have got a general code anyalsis, please check Analysis.docx for reference.

And we'd like you to do more research and answer the following questions clearly.

• for compiliation, some jars are included, please double check if there are present and needed or not.
• for execution, is the parameters list fully supported by JDK 8?
• for execution, a policy file is passed by command line (-Djava.security.policy=/home/farm/processor/deploy/app/scripts/services/tester.policy), please double check the settings inside the it are properly supported with http://docs.oracle.com/javase/8/docs/technotes/guides/security/PolicyFiles.html
• for execution, a customized security manager (NMaxSecurityManager) is used, please check if that is still working properly.

JDK 8 Feature Verification

First, the verification, should be applied to SRM and MM problems. Currently, for the allocated Arena VM, there are problems and contests loaded for usage, you are not required to do manually setup anymore.

A complete new features for JDK 8 can be found at http://www.oracle.com/technetwork/java/javase/8-whats-new-2157071.html

You are expected to write solutions for testing these features and provide a check list showing which are supported, which are not supported and why.

Please cover the following sections.

• Java Programming Language (Lambda expressions) - see what will affect competitor to code the solution
• Date-Time package

Arena VM

Before asking your own VM, you need to have a public key on your profile before asking for the VM.

You can find more details on how to generate a key http://apps.topcoder.com/wiki/display/projects/Generate+SSH+Key and how to connect using it http://apps.topcoder.com/wiki/display/projects/Connect+Using+SSH+Key.

To use the Arena VM, please follow http://apps.topcoder.com/wiki/display/docs/Competition+Engine+VM+Setup