Java 7 for Fedora 16

[Andy Grimm]

On Wed, Aug 3, 2011 at 6:00 PM, Deepak Bhole <dbhole at redhat.com> wrote:
> * Douglas Myers–Turnbull <dmyersturnbull at gmail.com> [2011-07-25 20:53]:
>> > I was planning to do this myself .. glad you started it :) I can take
>> > over the Feature and doing all the work if you're fine with it...
>>
>> Please do!
>>
>> The only work I've done (literally) is on the feature page, but feel
>> free let me know if you need anything from me.
>>
>
> Hi Douglas,
>
> Thank you once again for creating the page. I have started updating it
> and will add docs and other links tomorrow:
> https://fedoraproject.org/wiki/Features/Java7
>
> For anyone and everyone interested, a Java 7 build is now available in
> the Fedora 16. I will build for rawhide in the coming days as well:
> http://koji.fedoraproject.org/koji/buildinfo?buildID=257034
>
> Cheers,
> Deepak

After some discussion on #fedora-java over the past 24 hours, I was
asked to continue the discussion here regarding the implications of
openjdk 6 and 7 coexisting in F16.  Right now, java packages are being
built for F16 using openjdk 7, and if they are built without
"target=1.6", they will fail to load under openjdk 6.  (One simple
example of this is xalan, see
https://bugzilla.redhat.com/show_bug.cgi?id=733686 ).  Some possible
solutions proposed over IRC:

1) Blacklist openjdk 7 from build roots for f16 -- this means that it
doesn't get tested very well, though.

2) Ensure all java packages use target=1.6 -- there's no standard way
to do this across ant, mvn, javac, etc. though.  You could check for
1.7 bytecode at the end of a build, but packages would still need to
be individually fixed.

3) Drop openjdk 6 from F16 entirely

It was also mentioned that Fedora is beginning to include some
packages which build much more cleanly on openjdk 7 than they do on 6,
so enforcing openjdk 6-only build roots might break some things.

Other suggestions are welcome.  I don't have a strong opinion about
this, just a strong interest in having a sane Java environment in F16.

Thanks,

--Andy