Subject: JRE support - is it worth it?
Newsgroups: gmane.linux.gentoo.devel
Date: 2003-05-20 03:49:25 GMT (6 years, 6 weeks, 5 days, 7 hours and 15 minutes ago)
Greetings, This is not an RFC, per se, but I am posting this with the general purpose of soliciting discussion. This might be a controversial subject, so I think it warrants some conversation before it reaches the level of an RFC. I have talked with a couple of people the idea of dropping JRE support in Gentoo. The reasons this idea came about: 1. Gentoo is a source-based distribution. We have Java-based packages that build from source for the same reason that have C packages that build from source. Yet, it's unthinkable to have a system without a C compiler. Thus it should be almost as unthinkable to have a system without a Java compiler. 2. Few people actually use a JRE inside of Gentoo for the above reason (if any) ... yet of course reliable statistics on this are not available. Furthermore, some packages require a JDK to run, namely servlet engines, development environments, and rare apps that depend on the JDK without actually compiling/debugging anything. 3. Jikes will compile most things, but not everything. Furthermore, Jikes lacks a javadoc tool, among other things. So it's not suitable to have a JRE + Jikes combination, though in theory that might be possible someday. User impact to the above idea: 1. Download & install size: Using 1.4 as our example, JRE's are about a 22MB download. JDKs are about 42MB. It's also safe to assume that the JDKs also occupy roughly twice the disk space, though I don't have specifics on it for this email. 2. Reduced complexity in java-config(1), simplifies the nature of Java ebuilds for both Gentoo developers and users submitting ebuilds alike. 3. Reduced QA burden. I would like to hear your thoughts on this. Cheers, Dylan Carlson Public Key: http://pgp.mit.edu:11371/pks/lookup?op=get&search=0x708E165F Key fingerprint = 3AEA DE38 FE42 15A6 C0E2 730E 3D04 BCC1 708E 165F