Java problem

[Les Mikesell]

Craig White wrote:

>>> yeah...why don't you complain to them?
>> Them?  Fedora is the one that ships something that isn't java that 
>> executes when you type 'java'.
> ----
> I guess I missed the post where you found something that didn't work
> because of their GCJ version.

I omitted that, thinking it was self-evident. It doesn't run OpenNMS, 
the resin web server, or much of anything else I've found.  Even 
azureus, the simple bittorrent client has this statment on their wiki:
"Azureus 2.4.0.0 and greater may run with GCJ 4.1.0 or greater, however 
some people experience problems which does not occur with the J2SE 
version."  Who has time for that kind of trouble?

> ----
>>>> How about one that respects both other companies licenses and their own 
>>>> users?  As in making Sun java work when installed?
>>> ----
>>> Isn't that Sun's job? There isn't a Sun java package available from any
>>> Fedora package/respin/repository that I am aware of.
>> Sun's java works, but if you install it and type java, something else 
>> will run.  That's fedora's fault.
> ----
> not if you run
> alternatives --config java # and set it to Sun's installation

But it doesn't work with Sun's RPM, which my point.  It could have been 
made to work out of the box for the price of a couple of symlinks and 
saved every user hours and hours of time and trouble. Other 
distributions have gone farther than that. And RedHat does for their 
paying up2date customers, while still claiming they "can't" redistribute 
for fedora users: http://rhn.redhat.com/errata/RHEA-2007-0582.html

> not if you set the proper environment variables such as
> CLASSPATH/JAVA_HOME/JRE_HOME or simply put the java binary in your $PATH

Yes, but then that part is done wrong for every java component that is 
included in the distro.

> Too bad that Sun's instructions for doing these things are vague or
> non-existent.

If it is no trouble, will you set it up my computers for free?  Or at 
least quantify your meaning by stating what you would charge?  Sun has 
no instructions for --alternatives, and if you think the jpackage 
documentation (for the versions they supported - they seem to have given 
up on fedora) to build an alternatives-conforming package is simple and 
straightforward you've found something I missed.

The only straightfoward way I've found is the yummable version at the 
opennms site, with dropping the sun binary under /usr/java and replacing 
every shred of the alternatives system you can find with direct symlinks 
as a distant second.

> ----
>>> I don't know about Windows 64...it's not very popular you know and I am
>>> not rushing out to get it myself. If Sun's Windows 64 bit version works
>>> properly, it would be one of the few software packages that does.
>> Does anything work on Windows?  I meant Solaris as the comparison.
> ----
> Ah...well since Sun controls both Solaris and their Java, it would be
> amusing if they didn't work together.

I think its amusing that Linux browser plugins haven't worked for so 
long, yet it is so highly touted. Solaris may avoid the issue completely 
because I think they have a generic 32/64 bit library thunking facility. 
  I don't recall having any problem on Macs either but haven't paid much 
attention to what is 32 bit vs. 64 bit since it all seems to work.

> With Solaris, you also get ZFS but
> on the other hand, you get a ridiculously ancient perl-5.6 because they
> don't want to break backwards compatibility. This is an imperfect world
> we live in.

ZFS is just one of the many things that linux can't have because of the 
restrictions in the GPL (and Linus's refusal to stick to his early claim 
that his license exception regarding interface use applies to kernel 
modules). The number actually includes all code with any license that 
doesn't exactly match the GPL - and it always will.

I had hoped that Nexenta was going to give us the perfect combination of 
OpenSolaris with zfs and an up to date Ubuntu based userland, but the 
team seems to have gotten sidetracked building a commercial file server 
appliance first.  Maybe Apple will get their zfs out soon.

-- 
   Les Mikesell
    lesmikesell at gmail.com