Re: priorities for java alternatives
Eric Lavarde - Debian wrote:
> Speaking of alternatives, it would be nice to have a mean to completely
> switch from one Java alternative to another. Currently you need to modify
> more than 10 different alternatives in order to switch from e.g. kaffe to
> Sun's Java or back.
> I don't know how this could be fixed, but this is cumbersome. Wouldn't it
> be possible to define only alternatives for java and javac, and everything
> else would be slave alternatives of the both, depending if they're meant
> to be Runtime or Development commands?
You are correct. A solution to this problem has been incorporated into
java-common 0.25: update-java-alternatives(8)
Each technology implementation defines the set of runtime, development
and plugin alternatives in a file:
/usr/lib/jvm/.$jname.jinfo
Contents of /usr/lib/jvm/.java-1.5.0-sun.jinfo are shown below [1]
This allows update-java-alternatives to switch the entire set of
executables (and slaved man pages) to the desired implementation.
An open issue (for which there is not yet a bug for java-common) is
that we need to create a set of all possible alternatives
(the union of all known .jinfo entries) in java-common so that
update-java-alternatives can be modified to set the alternatives
not available by a given implementation (i.e. the difference in
of the sets [.all.jinfo - .$jname.jinfo]) to a noop implementation
(and corresponding man page). In the case of executables this can
simply be one shell script which says that the given command is
not yet available for this implementation: $jname
A second issue is update-java-alternatives needs to get an
option like "update-alternatives --display" perhaps
"update-java-alternatives --jname" which outputs the
name of the currently chosen implementation.
A third issue is that the test to see if update-java-alternatives
is running as root should only be taken only if an action
(and not just a query) is taken.
As I am not (yet) a DD I cannot make these changes myself.
More importantly does everyone agree with this approach?
Please advise,
--Tom
[1]
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/usr/lib/jvm/.java-1.5.0-sun.jinfo
::::::::::::::
name=java-1.5.0-sun-1.5.0.06
alias=java-1.5.0-sun
priority=53
section=non-free
jre ControlPanel /usr/lib/jvm/java-1.5.0-sun/jre/bin/ControlPanel
jre java /usr/lib/jvm/java-1.5.0-sun/jre/bin/java
jre java_vm /usr/lib/jvm/java-1.5.0-sun/jre/bin/java_vm
jre javaws /usr/lib/jvm/java-1.5.0-sun/jre/bin/javaws
jre keytool /usr/lib/jvm/java-1.5.0-sun/jre/bin/keytool
jre pack200 /usr/lib/jvm/java-1.5.0-sun/jre/bin/pack200
jre policytool /usr/lib/jvm/java-1.5.0-sun/jre/bin/policytool
jre rmid /usr/lib/jvm/java-1.5.0-sun/jre/bin/rmid
jre rmiregistry /usr/lib/jvm/java-1.5.0-sun/jre/bin/rmiregistry
jre unpack200 /usr/lib/jvm/java-1.5.0-sun/jre/bin/unpack200
jdk appletviewer /usr/lib/jvm/java-1.5.0-sun/bin/appletviewer
jdk apt /usr/lib/jvm/java-1.5.0-sun/bin/apt
jdk extcheck /usr/lib/jvm/java-1.5.0-sun/bin/extcheck
jdk HtmlConverter /usr/lib/jvm/java-1.5.0-sun/bin/HtmlConverter
jdk idlj /usr/lib/jvm/java-1.5.0-sun/bin/idlj
jdk jar /usr/lib/jvm/java-1.5.0-sun/bin/jar
jdk jarsigner /usr/lib/jvm/java-1.5.0-sun/bin/jarsigner
jdk javac /usr/lib/jvm/java-1.5.0-sun/bin/javac
jdk javadoc /usr/lib/jvm/java-1.5.0-sun/bin/javadoc
jdk javah /usr/lib/jvm/java-1.5.0-sun/bin/javah
jdk javap /usr/lib/jvm/java-1.5.0-sun/bin/javap
jdk java-rmi.cgi /usr/lib/jvm/java-1.5.0-sun/bin/java-rmi.cgi
jdk jconsole /usr/lib/jvm/java-1.5.0-sun/bin/jconsole
jdk jdb /usr/lib/jvm/java-1.5.0-sun/bin/jdb
jdk jinfo /usr/lib/jvm/java-1.5.0-sun/bin/jinfo
jdk jmap /usr/lib/jvm/java-1.5.0-sun/bin/jmap
jdk jps /usr/lib/jvm/java-1.5.0-sun/bin/jps
jdk jsadebugd /usr/lib/jvm/java-1.5.0-sun/bin/jsadebugd
jdk jstack /usr/lib/jvm/java-1.5.0-sun/bin/jstack
jdk jstat /usr/lib/jvm/java-1.5.0-sun/bin/jstat
jdk jstatd /usr/lib/jvm/java-1.5.0-sun/bin/jstatd
jdk native2ascii /usr/lib/jvm/java-1.5.0-sun/bin/native2ascii
jdk rmic /usr/lib/jvm/java-1.5.0-sun/bin/rmic
jdk serialver /usr/lib/jvm/java-1.5.0-sun/bin/serialver
plugin mozilla-javaplugin.so /usr/lib/jvm/java-1.5.0-sun/jre/plugin/i386/ns7/libjavaplugin_oji.so
plugin firefox-javaplugin.so /usr/lib/jvm/java-1.5.0-sun/jre/plugin/i386/ns7/libjavaplugin_oji.so
plugin mozilla-snapshot-javaplugin.so /usr/lib/jvm/java-1.5.0-sun/jre/plugin/i386/ns7/libjavaplugin_oji.so
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