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Date: Wed, 30 Dec 1998 19:06:01 -0500
From: Justin Wells <reader@semiotek.com>
To: Palle Girgensohn <girgen@partitur.se>, freebsd-java@FreeBSD.ORG,
        freebsd-ports@FreeBSD.ORG
Subject: Re: Porting java stuff? Proposal?
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My two cents on the porting issue:

Nate is right, there are likely to be multiple versions of Java on any system.

The most important differences, though, are the version-of-java differences. 
Most applications won't care whether their JVM is a JIT, ELF, or what type of
thread library it uses. Some will, but not most.

I think that means:

  -- Versions of Java should be installed as /usr/local/jdk.x.y.z

  -- The most featureful, newest version of Java should be symlinked so 
     that it appears under /usr/local/java, and this should change regularly
     as Java is upgraded. A port should check if it is highest version of 
     Java installed so far, and if so, symlink /usr/local/java to itself.
    
  -- Eventually, the most stable, reliable, and trusted version of Java 
     should appear as /usr/java: whenever it is that the FreeBSD community 
     finds Java useful enough to use for some core functionality. This won't
     exist for some time, but it's eventual existence justifies the notion 
     that /usr/local/java is the most recent. If you want the most stable, 
     that would be /usr/java--and if /usr/java doesn't exist, that's because 
     there is not yet a version worthy of the "stable" designation.
 
  -- People choose what JVM to use by default by setting their CLASSPATH
     and PATH to reflect their choice. Just because /usr/java and 
     /usr/local/java exist doesn't mean you HAVE to use them

  -- Core/critical applications would rely on /usr/java. Most userland 
     applications should try and use /usr/local/java. Individual applications
     that are known not to work with the most recent version of Java should 
     instead rely on the last specific version of Java with which they do work. 

All other issues, such as what thread library to use, whether to use ELF 
or a.out, should not be solved using the filesystem layout. Instead they 
should be determined by the port maintainer, or selected by an environment 
variable (either during install, or at runtime).

Since I'm not doing any of the work, feel free to ignore me. However I have
an application I'd like to write a PORT for (webmacro: www.webmacro.org) and
without a good underlying JDK port I can't do that :-)

Justin


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