Re: [PROPOSAL] New Virtual Packages and way to handle Classpath

[Jan Schulz <jasc.usenet@gmx.de>]

Hallo Dalibor,

* Dalibor Topic wrote:
>> * interface to unfree VMs (wqhich should be ~100% sun compatible
>And this means providing some java & javac wrapper scripts, setting CLASSPATH
>etc, right?

For the unfre: no. AFAIK, every unfree VM is comandline compatible to
the sun one (aehm, yes, apart from the internal details on optimize
jit and so on) and has the same API (IBM has for example the
'javac.Main' class in it).

Also, every java program is required to setup its classpath. This will
become very easy, if the second part of my proposal (which just got
one reply yet :/ ) is accepted:

for j in /usr/bin/java-1.4 /usr/bin/kaffe /usr/bin/whatever ; do
## Hm, maybe even
|for j in 'getclasspath -bin-java packagename' ; do
   JAVA=...
done   

if [ "$JAVA" = "/usr/bin/kaffe" ] ; then
  # do some magic...
else  
CP=`getclasspath -all packagename`
MAIN_CLASS="..."
$JAVA -classpath $CP $MAIN_CLASS 


>> * test all free java versions.
>> * interface to ant, so that the build time testing is as easy as
>>   possible.
>what's an interface to ant? Do you mean setting up ant for use with a
>particular VM/compiler combination?

so that setting ants 'build.compiler' will work. Or any other
sollution, but it should be the same for all packages.

>You should come to our semi-annual 'Does kaffe's GPL license apply to code
>running on kaffe' mailing list bursts. Pure fun. Sometimes it even spills over
>to debian-legal ;)

laywers should be prohibited... All of them...

>I think their licensing terms for the java API specs are very ... uh ...
>limiting. But as I said, kaffe is not java not a replacement for sun's
>offering.

Nice try :)

>> Not even, when you do that in a wrapper script via --bootclasspath? Or
>> in the wrapper script of the app?
>That's the perfect kind of question for debian-legal ;) 

Oh no!

>My gut feeling is that one needs to be very careful as a distributor of
>copyrighted works not to create derived works that violate the licenses of
>involved works. Adding missing classes to kaffe's bootclasspath from Sun's
>rt.jar for example, would violate the GPL. It may work for other VMs, I don't
>know, but I doubt that Sun's distribution terms allow it.

So that basicly means, tat you have to reimplement everything by hand
and can't uses things like xerces?

So when I write 
kaffe -bootclasspath xerces.jar .. -cp ... Main
I can't do it, because its against the GPL/whetever License?

Jan
-- 
Jan Schulz                     jasc@gmx.net
     "Wer nicht fragt, bleibt dumm."