Missing part in PDF report - Updating BiRT 2.2.1 -> 4.12.0

[mrogerieux-mosica]

My config & the update that I'm trying:

BiRT 2.2.1 -> 4.12.0
JDK 8 -> 11
Maven 3.5.6 -> 3.9.9
Eclipse IDE for Java and Report Developers 2019-03 (4.11.0)

I'm currently using an old version of BiRT (2.2.1), and I'm forced to upgrade to a newer version due to Java 8 not being supported anymore. This upgrade made me change some parts of my config and java code, which allowed me now to have a running version of my app that can generate PDFs with BiRT.

The problem is that some parts are missing in the document. Those are imported via a ListArray Java variable and displayed with a JavaScript script inside the .rptdesign, the other parts are displayed correctly. Due to what I've read in multiple discussions like this one, I think the JavaScript part is the problem, but I'm not sure about it.

#1515 (reply in thread)

I wanted to know if anyone has ever encountered this problem and has a solution to it, and/or if it can also be related to the gigantic gap in the version that I'm trying to update.

Also, if anyone has debugging tools/advice in order to have more informations about what's the issue here, I'm up for it.

Thanks!
Max

[speckyspooky]

My be you can offer a test report from your side without external dependencies then it is testable with the current BIRT version 4.20.

As side note Java 11 is out of support and BIRT works with the latest version 4.20 with Java 17.
Additional on it we plan to use Java 21 with BIRT 4.21 so you should think about which version will be the final version on your side.

[mrogerieux-mosica]

Hi @speckyspooky, thanks for your answer.

Yes, I didn't mention this, but the Java transition between 8 and 11 is just a step among the true upgrade, which is from 8 to 17 (probably with BiRT 4.20). The aim of this strategy was to smoothly transition, in order to identify more easily the possible regression due to the upgrade.

Update: I've successfully generated a report with the missing parts by duplicating the table of content in my report and enhancing it with the different parts, but some regression remains. Do you know where we can find any deprecated list or changelog of the different BiRT versions ? And also, do you know a way of improving debug with .rptdesign? Because, as far as I've seen, a few parts of my XML code are not working, but there are no errors nor warnings to tell me what's wrong with it.

Thanks!
Max

[merks]

If you look at the tags:

https://github.com/eclipse-birt/birt/tags

You can find change logs for each tag, e.g.,

https://github.com/eclipse-birt/birt/releases/tag/4.20.0