Re: [gentoo-java] Questions about packages

[Greg Tassone <greg@tassone.net>]

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Disclaimer:  I had to read your message a few times before I realized
your particular misunderstanding.  Here goes...

On Wed, 2006-06-28 at 20:12 -0700, David Highley wrote:
> I have some generic questions about the gentoo Java packages. First I
> wonder why you would package Sun's Java for x86 and x86_64 platforms
> since it can be down loaded from Sun.

Gentoo does not generally build *new* source distributions for the
software packages of others, but repackages existing distributions to
build properly/cleanly on the Gentoo platform.  In other words, since
Sun's JRE and JDK packages are released as binaries, Gentoo packages
them as binaries.  If/when Sun releases the sources for their runtime
under a different licensing model I'm sure you will see such a source
distribution (current Sun licensing and distribution policies don't
easily allow for this).


> Second question is why I do not see any apparent attempts at creating a
> package for Sun's distribution on the Power PC platform.

As to why there isn't a Gentoo package for this binary, the reasons
probably are as follows:

      * I don't know that anyone has ever expressed interest in it (I
        haven't checked).

      * The Java platform on Gentoo has been in a state of flux for
        approximately 1 year now due to the upgrade effort to Java 5 and
        higher.  During much of this time a package-freeze has been in
        effect.

For more information please see here:

http://www.gentoo.org/proj/en/java/tiger-faq.xml

Hope that helps...

~ Greg


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