Bug#650928: java-common: A very recent (Dec 2011) change somewhere in java hosed various aspects of java

[Emmanuel Charpentier <emm.charpentier@free.fr>]

Package: java-common
Version: 0.45
Severity: important

Dear Maintainer,
Symptoms (end-user point of view) :

1) no more communication between LibreOffice an Zotero (3.0beta2) or Zotero
Standalone (ditto). A look at Zotero site suggested to switch to OpenJDK (I
also have sun's, as current default), which led to :

2) one cannot switch java installations with update-alternatives-java :
root@eee-ec:/home/charpent# update-java-alternatives --list
java-1.6.0-openjdk-i386 1061 /usr/lib/jvm/java-1.6.0-openjdk-i386
java-6-sun 63 /usr/lib/jvm/java-6-sun
root@eee-ec:/home/charpent# update-java-alternatives --set
java-1.6.0-openjdk-i386
update-alternatives: erreur: pas d'alternatives pour -javaplugin.so.
update-alternatives: erreur: pas d'alternatives pour -javaplugin.so.
root@eee-ec:/home/charpent# update-java-alternatives --set java-6-sun
update-alternatives: erreur: pas d'alternatives pour -javaplugin.so.

==> Leads to a hosed LibreOffice/zotero subsystem (major funcionality for
me...). I  seriously considered reportig this bug as critical (since it beaks
unrelated software), but settled to important (renders the package unusable for
most uses, but I cannot prove it is effectively unusable for *all* purposes...

*** Please consider answering these questions, where appropriate ***

   * What led up to the situation?
regular (frequent) updates to a debian wheezy system

   * What exactly did you do (or not do) that was effective (or
     ineffective)?

See above for symptoms.

Tried to reinstall openJDK : no change to symptoms.
Did *not* try to reinstall sun Java6 packages, which are no longer available in
Wheezy.

   * What was the outcome of this action?

No modification of symptoms ; no possibility to switch java installations.
   * What outcome did you expect instead?
At least to be able to switch existing java implementations...

*** End of the template - remove these lines ***



-- System Information:
Debian Release: wheezy/sid
  APT prefers testing-proposed-updates
  APT policy: (500, 'testing-proposed-updates'), (500, 'testing')
Architecture: i386 (i686)

Kernel: Linux 3.1.0-1-686-pae (SMP w/2 CPU cores)
Locale: LANG=fr_FR.utf8, LC_CTYPE=fr_FR.utf8 (charmap=UTF-8)
Shell: /bin/sh linked to /bin/dash

java-common depends on no packages.

java-common recommends no packages.

Versions of packages java-common suggests:
ii  default-jre  <none>
ii  equivs       2.0.9 

-- no debconf information