Bug#609665: libgcj10: please provide ABI virtual package

[Lionel Elie Mamane <lionel@mamane.lu>]

On Tue, Jan 11, 2011 at 08:10:11PM +0100, Rene Engelhard wrote:
> On Tue, Jan 11, 2011 at 07:51:37PM +0100, Lionel Elie Mamane wrote:

>> If I understood well, this would be a versioned dependency on
>> libgcj-jre (probably ">= 4.4.5-1~"), or maybe a dependency on

> doesn't exist.

Typo; this should be gcj-jre instead of libgcj-jre.

>> gcj-4.4-jre. But the information of the "-4.4-" or the ">= 4.4.5-1~"
>> has to come from src:gcc somehow (I guess with the same versioning as
>> in the .shlibs file). Maybe a dpkg subst variable, maybe through a
>> dependency-only package, or a virtual package.

> Yes, seems so. But a dependency on gcj-4.4-jre will not force you
> anything, gij,gcj etc. can still point to anything, gcj-4.4-jre just
> brings you an empty package which brings you gcj-4.4-jre-headless,
> which gives you gij-4.4, gcj-4.4 via it's dependencies, not "gij" or
> "gcj" or whatever your "java" might point to.

Well, I'm not seeking for the "right version" of gij (and its compat
wrappers/symlinks in /usr/lib/jvm/*) to be the _default_ one, but to
be present, so that the shipped jar.so files _can_ be used, not
necessarily that they are used _by_ _default_.

In the case of LibreOffice, it would force that there _is_ an entry
in Tools / Options / Java that will use them, not that it is the
default: it is already the case that the default can be e.g. OpenJDK,
which will ignore the .jar.so files altogether.

I get the impression that libgcj-bc is upwards compatible, but not
necessarily backwards compatible. So maybe the best dependency we can
hope for would be something like:
 gcj-4.4-jre (>= 4.4.5-1~) | gcj-jre (>= 4.4.5-1~)
or
 gcj-jre (>= 4.4.5-1~) | gcj-4.4-jre (>= 4.4.5-1~)

-- 
Lionel