Re: apt and java
Damien Raude-Morvan wrote:
Hello,
Le Dimanche 3 Octobre 2004 22:03, Omry Yadan a écrit :
This is all very confusing to new users.
Having to create a package is kind of awkward, since I just want to
install someone else's packages.
is it not possible to bundle sun's Java as a basic package (in contrib,
for example), and allow users to choose which java they want to install
the free kafee, or the not so free j2sdk?
It's clearly, AFAIK, not possible to bundle Sun JDK in Debian for licencing
issues. Sun doesn't allow redistribution/modification of its proprietary
JDK or JRE. But I question myself : how can Mandrake bundle Sun JDK on
their Powerpacks CD (not available freely via FTP, sold on CD/DVD) ? Did
they have a special licencing policy with Sun ?
Thats one path to explore...
I think this thread maybe discussed before on debian-legal...
A question comes into my mind:
Was the discussion focused on how to get make java and Debian closer, or
on how to avoid the horrendous sun licensing?
I mean, there might be a way to achieve both:
Maybe its possible to create a standard stub for sun's jvm?
say, we add a standard JVM slot, and have java programs depends on the
existence of a JVM.
than, we create a deb for each free JVM (kaffe and friends?), and a
standard stub for sun's jvm.
if a user wants to install a java application through apt-get and he has
no JVM deb installed, apt will give him a choice (can apt ask user how
to resolve dependency conflict, or is it always automatic?) as to which
JVM he wants to use.
if a user which chooses the stub for sun (named something like :
sun-j2re1.5-stub, or sun-j2sdk1.5-stub), the stub will search for sun's
jres and sdks on the system at configuration time:
* if it finds none, it will tell the user to download it from sun and do
dkpg-reconfigure;
* if it finds more than one it will ask the user which one he wants.
* if it finds one, it will just pick it up.
something like that is much simpler for users, IMHO than having them
create packages.
As a developper, you should really have a look at gcj, for example : native
compilation of java is really cool and help Java portability ! It's really
powerful with SWT or SwingWT [1]...
I will have a look, sounds interesting.
but it does not help java portability.
I know everyone here are open source advocates, but face it:
1. good programs sometimes comes without the source.
2. not all users are interesting in compiling the programs they run, it
scares the shit out of some users.
It's really funny to hear Sun saying « Java is portable » : they bring us
x86/linux x86/win32 x86/sparc and amd64/linux... BSD ? m68k ? ppc ?
I don't follow:
Java is portable, JVM's are not.
whats the point?
btw: swingwt looks fantastic.
I was unaware of it.
Thanks.
Omry.
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