[fedora-java] Fedora java packaging, icedtea vs gcj

[Andrew Haley]

Thomas Fitzsimmons writes:
 > Sander Hoentjen wrote:
 > > Hi all,
 > > 
 > > 
 > > There is a program i would like to package (josm), only it doesn't
 > > compile with gcj, but it does with icedtea. Can this go into fedora?
 > 
 > During the Fedora 8 Features FESCo meeting, the issue of build
 > requiring IcedTea came up.  The informal policy decision was that
 > packages may build require IcedTea, but must still run on the base
 > Fedora architectures (i386, x86_64, ppc, ppc64) without requiring
 > external packages.  For Fedora 8, that meant packages had to run on
 > ppc/ppc64 libgcj.  For Fedora 9, IcedTea's ppc/ppc64 interpreter
 > should suffice.  So while ideally the package would build on both,
 > pragmatically I'd say go ahead and build require IcedTea.

I understand that, but it would surely be better in this case to get
the fix into libgcj.  It's not particularly difficult to do, and
surely we can be allowed the short time it would take to get the fix
in, and then the package would run everywhere.  Sure, it's tempting to
take the easy road, but in this case it's not hugely difficult to do
the right thing.

Andrew.

-- 
Red Hat UK Ltd, Amberley Place, 107-111 Peascod Street, Windsor, Berkshire, SL4 1TE, UK
Registered in England and Wales No. 3798903