Re: packaging jars vs. classes

[per@bothner.com]

Aaron Brashears <gila@gila.org> writes:

> Joe Emenaker sent a nice idea to me which the list didn't get to
> see. He suggested making a script which does autodetection of jar
> files in your /usr/share/java and sets the classpath
> appropriately.

Which is what you have to do anyway if you want to implement Java 2.

http://www.javasoft.com/products/jdk/1.2/docs/guide/extensions/index.html

There is some question whether is would be better to install class files
in a standard directory or install jar files in the extensions
directory.  The former only searches one place; the latter has get the
indexes of all the jar files.  My guess is that class files is faster
in the case of many extensions;  searching jar files might be faster
in the case of just a few extensions.  On the other hand, using jar
is easier to manage when there are many extensions, and uses less disk
space.  Also, it is "standard".

So I suggest the Java policy shuld define a directory for extensions.
Note this is actually two directories: a /usr/share directory for jar
files and a /usr/lib directory for .so files.  A Debian packaging of
jdk 1.2 or 1.3 should ideally be set up so it uses the standard Java
extensions directories.  Tweaking some shell scripts or sym links
might work.
-- 
	--Per Bothner
per@bothner.com   http://www.bothner.com/~per/