[arch-dev-public] Java on archlinux

[Andreas Radke]

Am Sun, 29 Jun 2008 01:29:11 +0200
schrieb Jan de Groot <jan at jgc.homeip.net>:

> As some people have noticed, I put a lot of effort in getting a free
> java runtime and SDK on archlinux, using GNU java, Eclipse-ecj and
> some other free tools, wrapped in java-gcj-compat.
> 
> The downside of this whole project is that it's stuck at java 5.0, the
> runtime isn't certified (the eclipse compiler is) and there's no more
> effort put into this project by redhat.
> 
> Since a while, there's an alternative to java-gcj-compat, called
> icedtea. This project is based on openjdk, with the difference that
> missing pieces of openjdk are filled in with parts from GNU classpath.
> One example is the webbrowser plugin, that has been missing from
> x86_64 since java's existence for this platform. The icedtea6 java
> environment passes sun's testsuite, making it a full blown GPL'ed
> java environment that is compatible with Sun's java. As it's
> developed by redhat, it also compiles fine with GCC 4.3, which we
> can't say about openjdk.
> 
> I would propose to package icedtea/openjdk for archlinux and make it
> the prefered java environment. Packaging this java environment
> requires a java compiler, our current free java platform is able to
> build icedtea/openjdk from source.
> This means that only java tools and packages required to build
> icedtea/openjdk will get built with gcj/ecj/java-gcj-compat, others
> will get built with icedtea/openjdk.
> Making this switch means no official support for java-gcj-compat
> anymore. If something continues working with java-gcj-compat, it's
> nice, but if it doesn't, we don't consider it a bug.
> 
> Please let me know what your thoughts are about this change.
> 

+1 from me. Most work seems to done already in the AUR packages.

But then we should also drop providing SUN's jre/jdk in extra.
Let's support only free software. Let's put SUN stuff back to AUR. That
also solves probable license issues.

-AndyRTR