Request for review: Bug 100054: Make building the Nimbus look 'n' feel optional

[Andrew Haley]

Andrew John Hughes wrote:
> 2009/5/14 Kelly O'Hair <Kelly.Ohair at sun.com>:
>> If the OpenJDK was able to build with jibx 1.1.6 or 1.2.1,
>> or in general was able to build with more of the jibx versions
>> (I don't know how hard that would be) does that change things?
> 
> It would simplify things a little, yes.  I'm not sure it's possible,
> given builds with both older and newer versions fail for different
> reasons.  It seems the package doesn't attempt any kind of stable API.

That surely is the key point.

It doesn't matter how much we might want a specific version of JIBX,
it isn't going to happen for Linux distributions.  Distros generally
pick a particular version of Package X, and if Package Y needs some
other version of Package X then Package Y must be patched or dropped
from the distribution.

We are not in a position to dictate to a user exactly which version of
JIBX will be installed on their system.  Therefore, if JIBX is now a
dependency of OpenJDK we'll have to find a way to make OpenJDK work
with whatever versions of JIBX people choose.

Andrew.