Gentoo Archives: gentoo-java

From: "Peter B. West" <lists@××××××.au>
To:
Cc: gentoo-java@l.g.o
Subject: Re: [gentoo-java] Question about Sun-Jdk 1.4.2.10
Date: Sat, 03 Dec 2005 08:23:47
Message-Id: 439155E4.10100@pbw.id.au
In Reply to: Re: [gentoo-java] Question about Sun-Jdk 1.4.2.10 by Greg Tassone
1 Greg Tassone wrote:
2 > On Wed, 2005-11-30 at 22:39 +0000, Peter B. West wrote:
3 >
4 >>Joshua Nichols wrote:
5 >>
6 >>>>So who wants to run a 1.4 JDK? And what, exactly, prevents anything
7 >>>
8 >>>>from being compiled under 1.5? The only thing I can think of is the
9 >>>
10 >>>>user of the newly reserved word 'enum'. Big deal. How long has 1.5
11 >>>>been around now?
12 >>>
13 >>>Have you actually tried using a 1.5 JDK to emerge your system? I'm
14 >>>guessing not, because xerces, xalan, and dom4j won't compile with 1.5,
15 >>>and they are pretty critical XML libraries that lots of things use.
16 >>>
17 >>
18 >>See my response to the "ant won't compile" message. Same story, at
19 >>least partially.
20 >>
21 >>Download sources for Xerces-J. Read README, which tells me I need the
22 >>tools. Download the tools. Extract "in the same directory." What does
23 >>that mean? Read build.sh. Ah, tools is in the Xerces directory. Do that.
24 >> Run sh build.sh jars. Result:
25 >>
26 >>BUILD SUCCESSFUL
27 >>Total time: 13 seconds
28 >>
29 >>Do I really have to do this with Xalan as well? Java 5 ships with
30 >>xerces as its parser, in place of crimson. That's in the incompatibility
31 >>notes. It ships with xalan, and defaults to using xsltc. Also in the
32 >>incompatibility notes. (And xalan 2.7.0 has one reported bug that I
33 >>know of that causes problems with netbeans 5.0).
34 >>
35 >>The simple fact is that I can pick up any of the binaries and they will
36 >>almost certainly run without problems. There are a handful of obscure
37 >>binary-level incompatibilities, but the only problem I have encountered
38 >>is the netbeans bug I mentioned; not an incompatibility.
39 >>
40 >>Peter
41 >
42 >
43 >
44 > I think you're missing one of the main points here... he did NOT say
45 > that they would not compile at all -- he said they would not compile on
46 > the current Gentoo ebuild base (e.g., "... using a 1.5 JDK to emerge
47 > your system").
48 >
49 > Then, did you see the rest of his message, the part talking about the
50 > 1.5 overlay that is being worked on? The main point of the overlay is
51 > to get these "incompatibilities" resolved. Then the "fixed" ebuilds
52 > from the overlay can become mainstream in Portage.
53 >
54 > This stuff takes time, especially when system-level stability issues
55 > stand in the balance.
56
57 I think you're missing my point. Java 5 works, and is, for practical
58 purposes, forward compatible with 1,4, with the exception of 'enum'. If
59 that is so, why not a flag 'java5', that triggers source source 1.4 on
60 packages that need it? The system JVM is 5, and Bob's your uncle.
61 What's the system-level stability issue?
62
63 This is not a technical issue, it's an ideological issue, as I said
64 before. This is, in fact, quite explicit in the Gentoo documentation. I
65 suggest that subscribers to the "conspiracy-theory-theory" (I never used
66 the word) read the "Gentoo social contract"
67 <http://www.gentoo.org/main/en/contract.xml>, including the definition
68 of "free software" <http://www.fsf.org/licensing/essays/free-sw.html>.
69
70 I suggest, further, that the Gentoo folks in this forum come clean about
71 this when asked in good faith about using Java 5 on Gentoo. The answer
72 is along these lines: Java 5 will not be supported on Gentoo until a 1.5
73 JVM is available under a Stallman-approved licence. The genuine options
74 for J5 users are to scrap the Gentoo Java support and maintain your own
75 Java environment, or to abandon Gentoo.
76
77 I see that there is yet another enquiry on the list about using J5. Do
78 that user a favour and tell him why he can't get a supported J5
79 environment on Gentoo, so that he can then make informed decisions. If
80 you guys are embarrassed by the Gentoo ideology, change it or leave. If
81 not, present it honestly, instead of spouting this deliberately
82 misleading BS about system stability issues. It's leaving users with
83 the impression that J5 is unstable, which it patently is not.
84
85 Peter
86 --
87 Peter B. West <http://cv.pbw.id.au/>
88 Folio <http://defoe.sourceforge.net/folio/>

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