Kawa 1.6.98/1.6.99 compiler bug?

[Tom Shields]

In late 1998 thru early 1999, one of my employees developed an prototype 
real-time event pattern monitoring framework using Java (1.1.7, at the 
time) for the low-level network IO and Kawa (1.6.57, at the time) for 
the pattern definition, recognition, and reaction. The framework and 
application was shelved after we lost the contract follow-on, and the 
original Schemer is no longer working for us.

I am now trying to resurrect the project and make some enhancements, 
including upgrading the application to the current releases of Java and 
Kawa ... and I've run into a compiler bug with the current version of 
Kawa. I can't find a copy of Kawa 1.6.57, so I can't demonstrate that 
the archived source code actually compiled without error, but class 
files with matching names exist in the archive and work.

I've been using Kawa 1.6.98 (release jar binary) and Sun Java JDK 
1.3.1_03 on RedHat Linux 7.3, and I've just downloaded 1.6.99 ... the 
compiler diagnostic output below is from the 1.6.99 compiler, and 
differs from 1.6.98 only in the internal line numbers of the backtrace.

The Scheme source code for the framework layer that connects to the Java 
underpinnings is full of Java method invocation procedure values, such 
as follows:

   (define file-name-of-file (primitive-virtual-method <java.io.File> 
"getPath" <String> ()))

which (apparently) compiled with no problems under Kawa 1.6.57 but 
generates the following output under 1.6.99 when compiling into class 
files using "kawa -C kawabug.scm" (where kawabug.scm contains the 
expression above):

   <unknown>:0: Literals: Internal error:java.lang.Error:  
gnu.expr.PrimProcedure does not implement Externalizable
   java.lang.Error: gnu.expr.PrimProcedure does not implement Externalizable
           at gnu.expr.LitTable.error(LitTable.java:82)
           at gnu.expr.LitTable.writeObject(LitTable.java:217)
           at gnu.expr.LitTable.emit(LitTable.java:45)
           at gnu.expr.Compilation.emitLiterals(Compilation.java:414)
           at gnu.expr.Compilation.addClass(Compilation.java:1348)
           at gnu.expr.Compilation.<init>(Compilation.java:740)
           at gnu.expr.ModuleExp.compileToFiles(ModuleExp.java:277)
           at kawa.lang.CompileFile.compile_to_files(CompileFile.java:91)
           at kawa.repl.processArgs(repl.java:389)
           at kawa.repl.main(repl.java:584)

Replacing the offending pseudo-lambda expressions with procedure 
definitions, such as:

   (define (file-name-of-file f) ((primitive-virtual-method 
<java.io.File> "getPath" <String> ()) f))

eliminates the compiler errors, but the higher layers of the Scheme 
framework passes the procedure values around, and I'd like to avoid 
having to do major re-writes of the original code at this point in the 
project.

I suppose that the easiest option is to ask if someone can provide me 
with a copy of Kawa 1.6.57 ... but maybe someone can figure out how fix 
the compiler bug as well.

Thanks for any help in advance,

Tom Shields