OpenJDK / default JDK for squeeze / issues on mips / open security issues for lenny
OpenJDK was just uploaded to unstable, based on the IcedTea6-1.8.1 release [1].
This version addresses some security issues, and this version should be shipped
with squeeze. The package should build on all architectures except on mips.
openjdk-6 on mips doesn't seem to be good enough to build itself, and apparently
gcj isn't able to build openjdk-6 on mips anymore. Having spent some time to
build it on gabrielli.d.o I don't see any obvious issues with the build and I
don't intend to spend more time to fix the mips issues in the time frame for
squeeze. Unless a mips porter wants to address these build issues, I suggest
that the default-{jre,jdk} packages for mips point to gcj, although it's not the
most viable choice. An option would be the backport of the mips hotspot build to
openjdk-6 [2].
openjdk-6 in stable didn't see any security updates for more than a year. I
don't plan to provide updates myself. Is the security team interested in fixing
these, or anybody else? Or does everybody see openjdk as an alibi for Debian to
build things and then use the sun-java packages from non-free? I see that there
are a few bug reports open requesting adding CVE numbers to the debian changelog
[3], [4], [5]. If this prevents the security team on fixing outstanding real
issues, I'd be happy to apply a patch for the changelog, just send it. The main
problem seems to be that the CVE numbers are not known before preparing an
update and nobody is willing to track these.
For those who are interested in an openjdk-6 update for stable, I did prepare an
update for some architectures at
deb http://people.debian.org/~doko/archive stable/
I don't plan any updates for unstable/testing beyond 6b18. 6b20 is available in
experimental, but disables the ARM assembler interpreter (which is 3-5x times
faster than the plain zero build), and 6b20 doesn't build anymore on sparc.
Matthias
[1] http://mail.openjdk.java.net/pipermail/distro-pkg-dev/2010-July/009814.html
[2] http://lists.debian.org/debian-mips/2010/04/msg00003.html
[3] http://bugs.debian.org/cgi-bin/bugreport.cgi?bug=560908
[4] http://bugs.debian.org/cgi-bin/bugreport.cgi?bug=566769
[5] http://bugs.debian.org/cgi-bin/bugreport.cgi?bug=566770
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