[fedora-java] Oh Poo. JPackages has too many depenency problems and it's been over a week!

[Anthony Green]

On Mon, 2006-04-10 at 10:11 -0700, Dan Thurman wrote:
> Please tell me what I need to do to keep up to date with java
> packages. 

It depends what packages you're interested in.  If you're talking about
packages provided in FC/FE, then just yum and you're done.

If you're talking about other packages, then I recommend helping port
them to Fedora.

>  I *thought* via jpackages I would get all the wonderful
> stuff as in FC4 but apparently FC5 has made a "clean break" from
> JPackages group?  Is this what you are saying?

JPackage packages many useful programs we feel should be part of the
core OS (or Extras).  There are two main problems with JPackage usage
right now:

 1. Dependencies on non-free packages.  I believe the JPackage team is
working to fix this.  I'm not sure what the latest status is.

 2. Inability to build (and run) with Free software.  We need to be able
to build everything in FC/FE with Free Software.  Unfortunately, many
JPackaged packages cannot be built with Free Software.  This used to be
because our Free tools and libraries weren't mature, but now mostly it
seems due to the Java Trap.  Unfortunately, many packages depend on
proprietary extensions to the Java platform (sun.*, com.sun.*, etc).
The good news is that upstream projects are slowly cleaning up their
act.  Batik recently removed sun.*/com.sun.* uses so it can be built
with Free software.  But, due to the high degree of interdependency
between Java packages, all we need is one bad package to prevent us from
building many others. 

AG