Comments on: apt-get install java (literally)

By: Sitsofe

Sitsofe — Thu, 18 May 2006 22:30:34 +0000

Re: standard APT/yum like mechanism emerge

Whenever I used java on Red Hat/Fedora I found http://www.jpackage.org/ of great use. Lots of java software that was (mostly) packaged in a way that RPMs were safe to mix between distros – a true rarity. It was always a shame it was so darned hard to get the run time though…

By: Ian Murdock

Ian Murdock — Thu, 18 May 2006 10:46:58 +0000

Ian,

I actually agree with you. Rather than getting Debian (and Red Hat, and SUSE, and Ubuntu, and…) specific versions into the respective distribution repositories, I’d much rather see a standard APT/yum like mechanism emerge, so that upstreams can package their software directly yet know it’ll be easy to install and integrate well with the underlying package manager.

-ian

By: Ian Bicking

Ian Bicking — Wed, 17 May 2006 16:31:43 +0000

I think making development libraries available through deb/apt isn’t very useful. That’s certainly my experience with libraries in other languages. The package maintainers are an unnecessary intermediary. Debian-specific patches to libraries are distracting or dangerous to developers, who probably care about more than just Debian. There’s not enough control over versioning. There’s a tendency to create unnecessary coupling in a system — if I’m using an application that uses javamail, and I am developing something with javamail, a conflict is likely. It’s just not worth it, and it’s distracting to developers.

Admittedly, if anything I get annoyed with such packaging, as I get snooty emails from developers trying to set up environments using deb/apt because they think it’s The Right Way, and that systems developed that are *actually* the right way are wrong because they conflict in some minor way with deb/apt (or rpm, portage, etc). Developers have very different package management needs than what Debian currently provides, and the kind of value added through packaging in Debian is exactly what developers *shouldn’t* be relying on.

By: Michael Perry

Michael Perry — Tue, 16 May 2006 17:42:01 +0000

Very cool! I’ve not done this on unstable yet. For all the years I’ve installed debian on this and that, its been downloading the bin image. Hopefully it also sets the plugin for mozilla to work and identify the java library within the plugins directory for firefox. Its worth noting that everytime I’ve done the binary install there always are a few steps to get the plugin working with firefox or mozilla.