GUI controls for instrumentation

[Dariusz J. Garbowski]

On 03/25/2006 10:59 AM, Nicolas Mailhot wrote:
> Le samedi 25 mars 2006 à 10:47 +0000, Dariusz J. Garbowski a écrit :
> 
>>> If it where that easy, we'd have the latest eclipse version in Fedora
>>> with all the major plugins instead of the current situation.
>> Heh, it *is* that easy -- get Sun's Java stack, install, download your 
>> app of choice, install and run!
> 
> It's not, I'm sorry. You require lots of end-user work to make it
> anything like work. That's why a stupid app like the logitech remote
> controler (which has very simple fontionnality) is still not available
> for linux even if it was written in java to be cross-platform.

There's nothing in the applications themselves to stop working on Linux. 
Work user has to put comes from the fact that distributions tend to make 
user's life more difficult by not making it trivial to have e.g. Sun's 
JRE installed (I don't want to blame distro developers here, Sun is 
probably the most guilty by not allowing to repackage and redistribute 
JRE). Yet situation is IMHO similar to proprietary NVidia drivers: users 
just have it easier thanks to the work of Livna developers (at least on 
Fedora). And, hey!, users still manage to install proprietary nvidia 
drivers from NVidia rather than Livna, with all the hassle it makes! 
Users are not stupid, they are ready and able to do quite a few things 
when they have clear instructions.

Let's say we have "Livna JRE" to install using yum. What's missing to 
make running Java apps trivial is making sure that there is at least a 
simple shell script to run it from command line. Say, user opens up "Run 
Command" dialog and types "jmeter" and it just starts. Of course the 
script would need to line on $PATH. Other "use case" is user opens up 
application's directory and double clicks the script. Application 
starts. Many applications already do provide it: NetBeans, Eclipse, 
JMeter...

Then a step further is packaging applications for distro, like each 
other native application.


> For a developper java is easy. As soon as you need an average end-user
> to make it work and are paying the support costs it suddenly is no
> longer anywhere near a good choice.

Nothing to do with Java applications, it's all about packaging. If your 
application is packaged for Linux, it will be easy to run! Vice versa it 
can be difficult for Windows if it's not packaged for Windows. Where's 
Java fault here?


> And I'm not even talking about the differences between jvm behaviour (if
> you think you can go sun-only just compare the arches sun, ibm and bea
> support)

You asked about *easy* way -- the easiest, least troublesome is to use 
Sun's JRE. You are free to try other solutions too. You have this 
freedom. It's good. Don't want problems? Try Sun first. If you really 
need to run on more exotic hardware, you are likely to hit other issues, 
yet it's a particular JRE's issue. Bug IBM/Sun/BEA to fix it :-)

Same with free stack. Everybody knows it's not quite there yet to run 
all Java software. And yes there's a few Java apps out there using sun.* 
packages -- not a Java issue either. Bug application developer to fix it 
so it's ready for free stack.

Want to avoid as much issues as you can? Get Sun's JRE and make sure 
it's on your PATH before free stack is.

Regards,
Dariusz

	
	
		
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