[lsb-discuss] Where (oh where) does java go.

[Wichmann, Mats D]

________________________________

From: Joseph Kowalski [mailto:jek3 at sun.com] 
Sent: Tuesday, May 13, 2008 5:03 PM
To: Wichmann, Mats D
Cc: lsb-discuss at lists.linux-foundation.org
Subject: Re: [lsb-discuss] Where (oh where) does java go.


Wichmann, Mats D wrote:


	No, as long as the specified path gets you the right thing,
	nobody cares.  The alternatives approach worries me more, as
	some action performed on the system may cause the same path
	/usr/bin/java to end up referring to a different jre, maybe
	one that doesn't meet the LSB guidelines.  We sort of have that
	same worry with Perl and Python, except there aren't nearly as
	many differing interpreters floating around (although version
	changes could be an issue there too).
	  

Right.  My bigger concern is the possible mismatches.  What if
/bin/java -> ../<JRE#1>/bin/java and /bin/javaws -> ../JRE#2/bin/javaws.

This is a more interesting topic when we talk about the "from below"
view
of the JRE (soon).


	

		The list of utilities is wide open for discussion.  The
candidates
		are: 
		
		    java           no brainer
		    javaws      almost a no brainer (MIA on 64-bits)
		    

	
	four of the seven current LSB architectures are 64-bit....
	  

Yea, I know.  The work around most of the time is to use the 32-bit
javaws.  That mostly works.  It doesn't work when: 
 
    1) The application uses JNI to carry platform specific code.

    2) There isn't a 32-bit environment (as in Ubuntu, others...) 
 
just been there, was playing with O3spaces, and the workplace client
just won't go right on x86_64.... it hurts...
 

Its an internal issue for either Sun or OpenJDK to deal with this.

What are the "4" and "7"? 
 
ia32, ppc32, s390  are the 32 (or 31 :-) bit set
ia64, ppc64, s390x and x86_64 are the other 
 
one could guess that if anybody ever got motivated enough, arm could
join this list, now that it's got first-class-citizen status in the
kernel and has Debian/Ubuntu ports...  but that's certainly not
committed to and need have no bearing on this discussion.
 
s390 is in interesting case, there is no longer an "enterprise" distro
for s390 with RHE and SLE both having stopped (I think Debian still
considers it supported, but that may not be for that much longer
either), but the application environment, which is all LSB talks about
anyway, continues to exist.  so not sure what this actually means in the
java context... would someone have to ship a 31-bit jre to have their
system conform with the s390 ABI, even if the distro is 64-bit?  
 

Of course you know that Sun doesn't do anything other than
x86 and x86-64 (aka: amd64).  Sun works rather closely with
Apple for PPC.  Other than that, we don't got anything.  I notice
that your list (if I found the right list) includes "S390X".  Wow!
SLES can probably deal with this.  After all, we are defining an
interface, not an implementation.

- jek3


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