Re: On the use of pre-compiled classes in packages

[Stefan Gybas <stefan@gybas.com>]

Stephane Bortzmeyer wrote:

> IMHO, it is not a Java-specific issue and I would post it on debian-project.

I think it is Java-specific as JAR files are architecture independent (unlike
.o and .a files).

I also have a Java package (GNUJSP) which just uses the upstream JAR instead
of recompiling. It is however possible to recompile but I don't do this in
debian/rules because

1. building the package is a lot faster (javac is very slow, even the one
   from IBM's JDK)

2. recompiling might introduce bugs which are not present in the upstream
   release. This once happened with GNUJSP (I don't know how, I was using
   jikes to recompile - it might be because of different core classes from
   the JVM) so I decided to use the upstream JAR.

> free software means the ability to recompile yourself on a Debian box
> (even if you finally choose to use the jar from the upstream author).

So you don't mind using the upstream JAR if recompiling is possible?

-- 
Stefan Gybas