Simon Phipps: “Yes, you can now apt-get install sun-java5-jre and have it install without fuss on Debian and Ubuntu.”
Great news. We’re one step closer to a Java/Linux combo that’s more than just Java bolted onto the side of Linux (admittedly, there’s still a bit of that here, though at least it’s attached with standard componentry now rather than the old bubble gum and bailing wire).
Why is tighter integration important? Because the alternative, namely Windows and .NET, offers a tightly integrated combo that “just works”. The more a developer has to do (like, say, ship a bundled runtime because that runtime isn’t guaranteed to be available on a key platform), the more attractive the alternative looks.
The real question is: Will this be enough? I’ve long contended that open-source Java is a red herring—the real challenge for Java on Linux is ubiquity, not licensing, and licensing is really only an issue because it gets in the way of ubiquity. Time will tell if this step represents the boost Java needs to become to Linux what .NET is to Windows.
I don’t know though. For that to happen, the major Linux distributions have to not just add Java to the menu of available software, they have to add Java to the default configuration (much as Perl and Python are default components today), and I just don’t see Red Hat, Debian, or Ubuntu doing that till Java is open source. Still, I’m optimistic we’ll get there. Question is, will we get there in time?
P.S. – How about making some of the Java platform components available via APT too? If I’m developing an application that uses, say, JavaMail, I have to go to the web, download it, figure out that it depends on the JavaBeans Activation Framework (JAF), download that, set up my classpath appropriately depending on where I downloaded them, etc. It would be great if I could just apt-get install javamail and have exactly the environment I need without additional effort.
Very cool! I’ve not done this on unstable yet. For all the years I’ve installed debian on this and that, its been downloading the bin image. Hopefully it also sets the plugin for mozilla to work and identify the java library within the plugins directory for firefox. Its worth noting that everytime I’ve done the binary install there always are a few steps to get the plugin working with firefox or mozilla.
I think making development libraries available through deb/apt isn’t very useful. That’s certainly my experience with libraries in other languages. The package maintainers are an unnecessary intermediary. Debian-specific patches to libraries are distracting or dangerous to developers, who probably care about more than just Debian. There’s not enough control over versioning. There’s a tendency to create unnecessary coupling in a system — if I’m using an application that uses javamail, and I am developing something with javamail, a conflict is likely. It’s just not worth it, and it’s distracting to developers.
Admittedly, if anything I get annoyed with such packaging, as I get snooty emails from developers trying to set up environments using deb/apt because they think it’s The Right Way, and that systems developed that are *actually* the right way are wrong because they conflict in some minor way with deb/apt (or rpm, portage, etc). Developers have very different package management needs than what Debian currently provides, and the kind of value added through packaging in Debian is exactly what developers *shouldn’t* be relying on.
Ian,
I actually agree with you. Rather than getting Debian (and Red Hat, and SUSE, and Ubuntu, and…) specific versions into the respective distribution repositories, I’d much rather see a standard APT/yum like mechanism emerge, so that upstreams can package their software directly yet know it’ll be easy to install and integrate well with the underlying package manager.
-ian
Re: standard APT/yum like mechanism emerge
Whenever I used java on Red Hat/Fedora I found http://www.jpackage.org/ of great use. Lots of java software that was (mostly) packaged in a way that RPMs were safe to mix between distros – a true rarity. It was always a shame it was so darned hard to get the run time though…