[Pkg-octave-devel] Bug#742503: Bug#742503: octave 3.8.1 requires java

[Mike Miller <mtmiller@debian.org>]

On Wed, Jul 15, 2015 at 08:59:32 -0400, Mike Miller wrote:
> On Wed, Jul 15, 2015 at 10:00:33 +0200, Alois Schloegl wrote:
> > Octave should not have a strong dependency on openjdk. Any of the
> > following solutions would do:
> > 1) the dependency should be changed to "recommended", and/or
> > 2) it should allow for some alternative java engine (e.g. gcj or
> > whatever). (see also [4] ),
> > 3) keeping the java dependency in a octave package "octave-java" as it
> > was before 3.8.x
> 
> Before #1 or #3 are feasible, some upstream work will need to be done to
> allow Octave to detect the (presence of / version of / path to) JRE at
> runtime. Please see upstream bug #40111.

Minor clarification: currently, when Octave is compiled with Java
support but the JRE is not actually present, the error is handled and
reported:

  octave:1> javaMethod ("getRuntime", "java.lang.Runtime")
  error: javaMethod: /usr/lib/jvm/java-7-openjdk-amd64/jre/lib/amd64/server/libjvm.so: failed to load: /usr/lib/jvm/java-7-openjdk-amd64/jre/lib/amd64/server/libjvm.so: cannot open shared object file: No such file or directory
  octave:2> 

So Octave does handle this to some degree. The error reporting is not
ideal and could be improved as part of #40111. But it does look feasible
to be able to run Octave without a JRE. Users who opt out of installing
default-jre-headless will see errors like the above if they try to use
java functions, or functions that rely on java such as those in the
octave-io package.

Thoughts?

-- 
mike