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

Joseph Kowalski jek3 at sun.com
Tue May 13 17:50:28 PDT 2008


Jeff Licquia wrote:
> Joseph Kowalski wrote:
>> Right.  My bigger concern is the possible mismatches.  What if
>> /bin/java -> ../<JRE#1>/bin/java and /bin/javaws -> ../JRE#2/bin/javaws.
>
> Wouldn't that be more of a QA issue with the distro?  Either it would 
> work, because both JREs are compliant and the "right thing" happens 
> when they're run, or it wouldn't, which would (I suspect) cause things 
> to blow up rather spectacularly when the two JREs use portions from 
> each other.
What happens depends upon how javaws is implemented.  It just runs a 
virtual machine and its not specified as to which (through something 
like alternatives or by an $(ORIGIN) algorithm or whatever).

The third case is the unexpected failure only triggered by some 
constructs in the JNLP file.

Its also about user expectations: "Why do I get different results from 
java and javaws (from my non-java conformant application, but that was 
my choice)".  Perhaps worse: "Why does my application perform so much 
worse (or better) when invoked by javaws?"

Anyway, (QA or whatever) this isn't a specification issue.  I was just 
agreeing with Mats as to the dangers of using alternatives.  Even 
jpackage.org suggests not using it.  No reasonable distro is going to 
"mix and match".  Alternatives just give the (probably fat-fingered) 
administrator the chance to hang himself.

- jek3




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