Re: GCJ Thought Balloon

[Per Bothner <per@bothner.com>]

Evan Prodromou <evan@debian.org> writes:

> So, I've been playing around with GCJ for Freenet, and thinking about
> how I'm going to package a GCJ-compiled version.
> 
> I wonder if there would be any value to having some kind of way to
> -automatically- GCJ-compile Java packages at installation time, if the
> package is GCJ-compatible and if GCJ is installed.

I think trying to compile at installation time is a bad idea.
It should be the package builder's job to compile into a .so file.
The package's configure script should have a --with-gcj option
to enable/disable building a .so file; the default is either
--without-gcj or it is autodetected.

For installation, I see two choices

(1) The .so file is always installed, as is the .jat file.
(2) The .so file is in a separate dependent package.

I think (1) is simpler, and I suspect the size of a .so isn't
enough to worry about.
-- 
	--Per Bothner
per@bothner.com   http://www.bothner.com/per/