Found OpenJDK 6 windows build at www.openscg.com/se/

[Dr Andrew John Hughes]

On 3 November 2010 14:47, Fernando Cassia <fcassia at gmail.com> wrote:
> On Wed, Nov 3, 2010 at 11:43 AM, Mark Wielaard <mark at klomp.org> wrote:
>> On Wed, 2010-11-03 at 10:54 -0300, Fernando Cassia wrote:
>>> On Wed, Nov 3, 2010 at 7:03 AM, Andrew Haley <aph at redhat.com> wrote:
>>> > I'm not at all convinced that there is any benefit in having Java
>>> > install in one enormous lump.  If I had my way the installation would
>>> > be much more fine-grained, and with the development of Project Jigsaw
>>> > it seems clear that this is the way things are headed.
>>>
>>> I disagree strongly. You´re thinking as a developer. I´m thinking as
>>> an end-user.
>>>
>>> In the windows world, people are told to "download and install Java"
>>> (the JRE) and it´s a single package, a single process.
>>>
>>> Likewise, in the Linux world, I´d expect a
>>>
>>> apt-get install openjdk
>>>
>>> To produce a full, working installation of Java, just as in Windows,
>>> (JRE, web browser plug-in, and Java WebStart).
>>
>> You seem to confuse the icedtea/openjdk developer community with a
>> distribution project for end users. We facilitate and work together with
>> the distribution projects, like openscg and the various GNU/Linux
>> distributions. So they can provide an "all-in-one" package that can be
>> installed and that provides everything in one big thing if users want
>> that. Including a free web browser plug-in, and Java WebStart. The
>> separation of source code is just a convenient way for developers to
>> work on and collaborate on the code together.
>
> That´s all I care abonut. as long as distros provide a way to install
> the whole of java (openjdk JRE with browser plug-in and java web
> start) in a single step and with a single package name, that´s fine by
> me.
>
> What I only feared is that the user would have to
>
> "Install openjdk" and then "install icedtea-plugin" and then "install
> icedtea-java-webstart"
>
> Having different package names IS confusing. That´s all I wanted to say.
>
> The rest (different repositories and the reasons for that) is
> perfectly fine by me, as long as that differentiation is only for
> developers, and not end users.
>
> Thanks Mark, by the way.
> FC
>

How the upstream change is handled by distributions is a matter for
them, not us.  However, I would expect that a simple meta-package is
available that brings in the dependencies required to give a full JDK
as expected by the end user.  For example,

IcedTea
|-- OpenJDK
|-- IcedTea-Web
|-- VisualVM

would make sense.  The user installs the meta-package IcedTea and it
installs OpenJDK, IcedTea-Web (plugin & netx) and VisualVM as
dependencies.  I certainly wouldn't expect the user to have to install
each dependency, any more than you have to manually install the C
library if you want Firefox.  The packaging system is supposed to hide
these kind of things.

The IcedTea-Web change is primarily for the advantage of end users.
The plugin and netx see a lot more fixes and new features than OpenJDK
which is pretty stable.  They are pretty much at opposite ends of the
development cycle.  By splitting them, we can make separate releases
of IcedTea-Web which distributions, in turn, can then ship to end
users without having to provide a new version of the entire JDK as
well.  So you should start to see bugs being fixed quicker than before
once this comes down the pipe into your favourite distro.  As I
mentioned earlier in this thread, separating it also makes the
possibility of porting it to other platforms more feasible.

Note that OpenJDK has never been shipped as-is in any distributions as
far as I'm aware.  It's always been IcedTea, because OpenJDK on its
own lacks the expected plugin and Java Web Start support.  Only
OpenSCG have provided such OpenJDK-only packages to my knowledge and
it sounds like they are now also switching to IcedTea.
-- 
Andrew :-)

Free Java Software Engineer
Red Hat, Inc. (http://www.redhat.com)

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