Re: Free JREs

["Grzegorz B. Prokopski" <gadek@sablevm.org>]

On Fri, 2004-10-15 at 04:50, Mariano García wrote:
> Hi all,

Hello Mariano,

> * I want to try a free jre (i think something like kaffe). What is the
> better free jre? I mean, I have some programs made with Sun JRE, so I
> want to try the most compatible free jre with Sun jre.

The term "most compatible" is quite vague, but in fact it isn't that
bad.  Most of free JVMs use GNU Classpath as their class library.  The
library is actually the part that defines the most of "compatibility"
aspects.  Unless there are things that a JVM does not support, any JVM
is  bound to what the class library provides.

As Arnaud pointed out, we have several java runtimes in Debian, each
of them with different "rough edges", but they all use GNU Classpath,
so the results you get with them should be quite similar (modulo JVM
bugs and unimplemented features - please, *please* report them!).

I for one would suggest you to try free-java-sdk package.  It provides
JAVA_HOME-like directory layout in /usr/lib/fjsdk with most of the
tools you might expect to find there.

> * If I use Kaffe (for example) Can I use java debian package like
> eclipse, argouml, ... ?

Not as far as I know.  In particular note that running GPL-incompatible 
applications (Eclipse, Ant, Jetty) on a GPLed runtime (like Kaffe or
JamVM) is a breach of GPL license, at least according to Free Software
Foundation.  For more informations you should probably see

	http://sablevm.org/wiki/LicenseFAQ

(Note: the FAQ is there so that we didn't have to go thru discussions of
this issue over and over again.  Some disagree with that view, mainly
Kaffe developers, so this issue is addressed separately in the above
FAQ)

> * Now I am using Sun JRE, installed without using 'java-package'. Do you
> recommend me install it using 'java-package'?

I've never used java-package :) but I guess that if you install JRE
"by-hand" then it does not register in packaging system as software
providing i.e. java2-runtime, which means some software from contrib may
not want to install.  You can easily fix that by using 'equivs' package
with .control files provided in java-common package that you can use to
generate and install stub debs that provide it. Otherwise I guess
java-package should take care of that for you?

> Thanks for reading.

This is really great you're interested in Free Java.  We all really
do our best on many fronts to improve its usability.  You can help
all us (and yourself, if you care for Free Java) if you i.e. provide
bugreports that allow us to fix bugs or implement missing but often used
features, or if you tell others where Free Java was useful for you.

Cheers,

				Grzegorz B. Prokopski
-- 
Grzegorz B. Prokopski           <gadek@sablevm.org>
SableVM - Free, LGPL'ed Java VM  http://sablevm.org
Why SableVM ?!?                  http://sablevm.org/wiki/Features
Debian GNU/Linux - the Free OS   http://www.debian.org