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

[Ben Burton <bab@debian.org>]

> I think we should distinguish are two different kinds of builds:
>   1) by the Debian build daemon
>   2) by a user that downloaded the package source

Both of these must still work out of the box.  In particular, as a user
I should be able to apt-get source foo-java and just build it without
having to fiddle with my javac alternatives.  Indeed, I do this
reasonably often (e.g., if I modify the sources, test bugfixes, etc) -
package builds aren't done only by the buildds.

If you want flexibility for users to be able to build with different
compilers, I would suggest a build process that by default uses a
known-to-work compiler (i.e., not /usr/bin/javac), but where this
default can be overridden by the user setting some environment variable
or other.

Ben.