Re: Oracle's Java package status

[Camaleón <noelamac+gmane@gmail.com>]

On Sun, 04 Sep 2011 13:54:17 +0200, Niels Thykier wrote:

> On 2011-09-04 12:22, Camaleón wrote:

>> I sent this message to "debian-user" mailing list but as I got no
>> feeback from there I try now here, if this is not the proper list,
>> please tell.
>> 
>> 
> Hi,
> 
> I am thinking d-java@l.d.o might be a better place (CC'ed).

Thanks. I'm keeping the CC.

>> I think you all are aware of the recent news for Oracle's java binaries
>> that will be removed from almost every linux distribution repositories¹
>> because of the new Oracle's policy for redistributing this packages
>> (sigh...).
>> 
>> So far so good but I can foresee there will be several users (me
>> included :-P) that will need to use Oracle's packages instead openJDK,
>> so is there any FAQ or How-To guide to make this step smoothly for
>> users that will need to install both Java JRE and plugin (32 and 64
>> bits) in Debian upcoming Wheezy and onwards?
>> 
>> 
> Perhaps the Java Team might be interested in it.  Personally (as a Java
> Team member) I think it might be time to "go all in" on using and
> improving OpenJDK.
>   If you can provide some code snippets that demonstrate where Oracle
> Java behaves better than OpenJDK, we are very interested in hearing
> about them.

I have not carried out a performance test for both "javas" but there are 
applications (and online banking applets) that require the use of 
Oracle's specific java and don't run (or have problems to properly run) 
with openJDK.

> Anyhow, as it is you can get away with creating a "fake" package that
> claims to be (or provide) sun-java6 and java{,2,5,6}-runtime{,-headless}
> and install that package locally (I believe equivs might be useful for
> this)[1].  This will work for Squeeze (and probably also Lenny) and
> Wheezy.

(...)

I've never packaged for Debian nor other distribution (I'm not a 
developer) but good to know this can be an option. What I would like to 
see (and I can help with) is a wiki page or an oficial doc where this 
Java policy change is documented for plain user, I mean, what are their 
options now, explained in an understandable way.

It's ages since I installed Java directly from Sun/Oracle site and while 
I don't remember I had any problem last time I did, I'm not aware of the 
current status nor if there are any gotchas for getting the 64-bits 
binaries and the plugin.

Greetings,

-- 
Camaleón