java, possible to package the gcj aot stuff separately ?

[Andrew Overholt]

* Andrew Haley <aph at redhat.com> [2008-07-31 05:20]:
> Caolan McNamara wrote:
> > Given that we've got openjdk on most platforms. Would it make sense to
> > package our java things so that the gcj ahead-of-time compiled stuff is
> > packaged into separate subrpms. e.g. taking hsqldb as a random example
> > the package takes 3696k but the aot /usr/lib/gcj/hsqldb contents takes
> > 2928k of that and it's unused except for the java-is-gij case right ?
> > 
> > We typically end up with openjdk installed due to the web plugin and
> > then with java-1.5.0-gcj + dependencies installed due to
> > the /usr/bin/rebuild-gcj-db and .so requires of the java packaging
> > guidelines when installing any additional java package. 
> > 
> > I'd like to e.g. have the option of just having openjdk installed and
> > not have to haul around the 45Megs in my /usr/lib/gcj dir
> 
> Sure, but it's potentially a lot of work to make the change, and how
> would the people who are running gcj know that they need to download
> the gcj ahead-of-time compiled stuff to get decent performance?

Yeah, one of the reasons we didn't do this to begin with was because RPM
has no notion of Suggests or Recommends like dpkg does.  Debian went
this route, but I've seen reports of people not realizing they needed to
install the associated -gcj package.

Andrew