Hi,
I see a HUGE headache is asking the user to deal with "changing paths" just so a few users can have two java implementations installed. Or even worse asking some sort of software to 'automagically' switch such declarations. there is nothing but grief in going that route with little to gain except for those highly specific usages of a untypical and quite unusual user such as yourself.
i.e. There is nothing whatsoever K.I.S.S. in what you are asking for. And ArchLinux is *very* SPECIFICALLY a K.I.S.S. style distribution.
however all is not lost for you since there *IS* both abs AND a way to track specialized PKGBUILDs on specific and particular machines. A user such as yourself CAN (!) choose to do the things YOU desire without asking Arch to accommodate what you ask for. i.e. You can do this for yourself quite easily using the Arch-way once you determine EXACTLY how to accomplish your configuration. I would suggest you read up on customizing PKGBUILDs so you can facilitate YOUR specific needs.
I think you misunderstood my intentions. I certainly don't want users to deal with changing paths if that was what it took. But I don't think this is necessary. The way I see it is this: now users can have one and only one java implementation. They can choose whether it is based on GNU's gcj+classpath or Sun's jre/jdk. Either way as long is the java application is "sane" and doesn't need Java 6 features (which are afaik not included in gcj), it will run OK. If Arch provided a way to have both environments installed, nothing needs to be changed for normal users. They would choose one of the environments and everything would run as smoothly as it does now, that's the beauty of it and I don't see where it contradicts KISS. Only some users who want to have more choice would install both environments. There would have to be one default, frankly I don't care which but probably it would be easier if it was the GNU's because it is in /usr/bin. If such an advanced user needed to run some application under Sun's java, they would probably only need to write a simple script which would put /opt/java/bin at the start of $PATH and perhaps set $JAVA_HOME. But this wouldn't have to be done by all users like you were saying, I would never suggest something like that. So actually I disagree, I think what I'm asking still complies to KISS. I mean one of the points of using Linux is to have a choice - you can choose your distribution, you can choose your favorite video player, you can choose your favorite PDF reader and you can choose to install three or five of them so that you can switch if you have a video file that your favorite player is unable to play or a PDF file that your favorite PDF reader has trouble printing. One of the reasons I chose ArchLinux was because it has so many packages available and most of them I can have installed at the same time. That's why I'm surprised that such a decision was taken not because there was some technical difficulty but because somebody felt that (almost) no one needs more than one java. Yes you're right, there is ABS and I can just rebuild my own jre/jdk packages. The only problem is - one of the other reasons why I chose ArchLinux was that the major "everyday" packages are prepared and I don't have to compile them myself. And it feels rather strange (and actually this I find a little contradictory to KISS) having to rebuild both packages with the only change to the PKGBUILDs in the way that I would change their "conflicts" line (perhaps I could actually use the binary packages and tell pacman to ignore dependencies). In conclusion, I don't want to fight or argue or be offensive in any way. If I'm missing something important that would make life of other users more complicated, please tell me. But so far I don't see what it is in my request (actually it started as more of a question really) that would complicate things for users that want to have only one java installed (which would be probably the most of them). Ondřej -- Regards, Ondřej Kučera