Heads Up: JDK 7 Linux platforms moving to Fedora 9

[Andrew John Hughes]

On 23/11/2008, Martin Buchholz <martinrb at google.com> wrote:
> Andrew,
>
>  I think we still have a mismatch of expectations.
>  Sun has historically provided binaries as their primary deliverable,
>  and continues to operate the "business" side of JDK development
>  in that way.    The problem of building a binary distribution that
>  will run well on as many systems in actual use as possible is a
>  different (and probably, harder) problem than what distro
>  maintainers do, which is to always take source, never binaries,
>  from upstream, and build binaries designed only to ever run
>  on the same system they were built on.

I've never really looked at or been interested in the proprietary
binaries Sun provides for obvious reasons.  I can see binaries still
being needed for proprietary platforms that still gravitate towards
this distribution model (I don't think anyone else would want to build
on Windows for example and are happy Sun do) but for the GNU/Linux
distributions which we're talking about here, they are going to be
apply to provide a superior experience for the reasons you've
outlined.  Notably, ensuring security updates are performed is going
to be much easier and centralised.

BTW, are the OpenJDK builds Sun provides completely Free[1]?

 A packager at a
>  company might want to use Sun's approach, and build
>  one set of supported binaries that will work on a relatively
>  disparate set of target machines within the company.
>

Would they really need to build it themselves on each target rather
than using the supplied build?

>  Another way of looking at it - it's a (Sun) bug
>  if Sun-built Fedora 9 binaries fail to run well on Ubuntu dapper,
>  whereas I doubt that the Fedora community itself is aiming
>  for that kind of compatibility.
>

I doubt it.  I also doubt there's much worth in any JDK claims for the
resulting binaries if they are run on a different platform than that
on which they were tested.

>  Your suggestion of advertising test build successes is a good one.
>  For the record, I have been and will continue to build all releases
>  of openjdk6 and openjdk7 on Ubuntu dapper, and will attempt
>  to fix (or report) any failures doing so.
>

Thanks. FWIW, I've successfully built most build drops on Gentoo and
also succeeded in building on Debian stable and Fedora.

>  Martin
>
>  On Sun, Nov 23, 2008 at 00:41, Andrew John Hughes
>
> <gnu_andrew at member.fsf.org> wrote:
>
>
> > Then should we be posting successful build testimonials here? Would
>  > that help? My own builds and blogs I've seen by others suggest builds
>  > on a variety of GNU/Linux platforms over and above just F9.
>

[1] http://www.fsf.org/licensing/essays/free-sw.html
-- 
Andrew :-)

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