On Tue, 2005-11-29 at 13:50 +0200, Petteri Räty wrote:
> Greg Tassone wrote:
> > 
> > FYI:  There is nothing "unstable" about JDK 1.5 (or Java 5).
...
>  It has simply
> > been package-masked here at Gentoo because there have been some
> > lingering ebuilds that didn't compile cleanly with it.  Hopefully it is
> > going to be unmasked VERY soon.
> > 
> 
> It also by default produces class files that are not compatible with
> earlier versions etc.
...
> You can safely make 1.5 the user vm using java-config -s. But just be
> sure you don't ever set it as the system vm.

Very true.  Just to clear up any confusion for others on the list, this
means that if you are trying to run a 1.5 JDK as the primary on your
system at the same time you have a 1.4 JDK running, the 1.4 JDK will be
unable to use most of the code compiled from the 1.5 JDK (by default).

Since most packages on the Gentoo distro compile themselves from source
(Java included), having a 1.5 JDK as your *system VM* means that your
Java applications would be compiled so that ONLY Java 5 (and higher)
runtimes could use the applications.  This is a show-stopper for those
still running a 1.4 JDK (at least for non-developers, who should know
how to deal with this stuff anyway):

Choices:

      * Run only 1.5 or higher on your system (with no intention of ever
        going back down).  Note that as of a while ago certain packages
        in the Portage tree still required 1.4, so this approach may
        preclude installing those packages from Portage.
 --OR--
      * Take Petteri's advice and leave 1.4 as the system VM, and set
        your "user" VM to 1.5 (or higher) if desired.

HTH to clarify...

Greg