Re: Java policy and ABI changes
Andrew Haley wrote:
> In my opinion, Java libraries without stable interfaces shouldn't be
> deployed in free OSes.
That's a nice goal but unfortunately the world is not so perfect, because
users occasionally require new software with shiny new bells and whistles.
Besides we cannot control upstream and prevent them from breaking ABI. As a
distribution we need to find a balance between features and stability.
I think the Java policy needs to be tweaked to allow for multiple versions
of the same library. The problem is much easier than for C libraries, since
we don't have a dynamic linker, so the user is responsible for adding the
correct library to the classpath. We just need to make sure the different
versions don't conflict, which usually means that both of them cannot
install the generic symlink "/usr/share/java/foo.jar".
It seems it would suffice to have the symlink created by postinst, which
would point it at the latest installed version (similar to ldconfig).
Note that I'm not suggesting we should package several versions of
libraries. That should be avoided, but when necessary there should be a way
to do it.
Marcus
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