Re: Environment variables for Debian (e.g. JAVA_HOME, etc)

[Dalibor Topic <robilad@kaffe.org>]

Matthew Palmer wrote:

> Symlinks, I would imagine, or maybe unfutzing Java to the point where it's
> binaries can live in the same playground with the other children.
>
> Rather than bemoaning the Debian Way, perhaps you could explain why Java has
> this need to be so incredibly different?

Because little Java lived in its own WORA world and didn't get to play 
much with the other kids. And the parents liked it that way.

> > Added to that, what happens if
> > there's a deb that packages some .jar ? (ex: junit). How to tell the java
> > system to recognize the deb so that users don't have to export CLASSPATH
> > themselves ? once again, w/o env. variables, I don't see how the java system
> > could be useable right away.
>
>
> Again, fix Java so that it has a regular include path system, like every
> other sane programming language out there.  I can't really see any reason
> why Java has to be gratuitously incompatible with the normal way, and I've
> never seen a good rationale from Java people why the normal way is so badly
> broken.

I think the core issue is that Java tries to be everything to everyone, 
and among other things, it tries to be a platform of its own.

And that means that Sun reinvents wheels for their Java platform that 
have been already done right on the native platforms. Ocassionally, Sun 
ends up with square pegs instead of wheels[1]. Then they make an 
industry standard out of them. :)

cheers,
dalibor topic

[1] On some platforms, square pegs[2] are better than what they have as 
'wheels' natively.
[2] Swing beats programming in MFC, I hope.