Greg Tassone wrote: > On Wed, 2005-11-30 at 22:39 +0000, Peter B. West wrote: > >>Joshua Nichols wrote: >> >>>>So who wants to run a 1.4 JDK? And what, exactly, prevents anything >>> >>>>from being compiled under 1.5? The only thing I can think of is the >>> >>>>user of the newly reserved word 'enum'. Big deal. How long has 1.5 >>>>been around now? >>> >>>Have you actually tried using a 1.5 JDK to emerge your system? I'm >>>guessing not, because xerces, xalan, and dom4j won't compile with 1.5, >>>and they are pretty critical XML libraries that lots of things use. >>> >> >>See my response to the "ant won't compile" message. Same story, at >>least partially. >> >>Download sources for Xerces-J. Read README, which tells me I need the >>tools. Download the tools. Extract "in the same directory." What does >>that mean? Read build.sh. Ah, tools is in the Xerces directory. Do that. >> Run sh build.sh jars. Result: >> >>BUILD SUCCESSFUL >>Total time: 13 seconds >> >>Do I really have to do this with Xalan as well? Java 5 ships with >>xerces as its parser, in place of crimson. That's in the incompatibility >>notes. It ships with xalan, and defaults to using xsltc. Also in the >>incompatibility notes. (And xalan 2.7.0 has one reported bug that I >>know of that causes problems with netbeans 5.0). >> >>The simple fact is that I can pick up any of the binaries and they will >>almost certainly run without problems. There are a handful of obscure >>binary-level incompatibilities, but the only problem I have encountered >>is the netbeans bug I mentioned; not an incompatibility. >> >>Peter > > > > I think you're missing one of the main points here... he did NOT say > that they would not compile at all -- he said they would not compile on > the current Gentoo ebuild base (e.g., "... using a 1.5 JDK to emerge > your system"). > > Then, did you see the rest of his message, the part talking about the > 1.5 overlay that is being worked on? The main point of the overlay is > to get these "incompatibilities" resolved. Then the "fixed" ebuilds > from the overlay can become mainstream in Portage. > > This stuff takes time, especially when system-level stability issues > stand in the balance. I think you're missing my point. Java 5 works, and is, for practical purposes, forward compatible with 1,4, with the exception of 'enum'. If that is so, why not a flag 'java5', that triggers source source 1.4 on packages that need it? The system JVM is 5, and Bob's your uncle. What's the system-level stability issue? This is not a technical issue, it's an ideological issue, as I said before. This is, in fact, quite explicit in the Gentoo documentation. I suggest that subscribers to the "conspiracy-theory-theory" (I never used the word) read the "Gentoo social contract" , including the definition of "free software" . I suggest, further, that the Gentoo folks in this forum come clean about this when asked in good faith about using Java 5 on Gentoo. The answer is along these lines: Java 5 will not be supported on Gentoo until a 1.5 JVM is available under a Stallman-approved licence. The genuine options for J5 users are to scrap the Gentoo Java support and maintain your own Java environment, or to abandon Gentoo. I see that there is yet another enquiry on the list about using J5. Do that user a favour and tell him why he can't get a supported J5 environment on Gentoo, so that he can then make informed decisions. If you guys are embarrassed by the Gentoo ideology, change it or leave. If not, present it honestly, instead of spouting this deliberately misleading BS about system stability issues. It's leaving users with the impression that J5 is unstable, which it patently is not. Peter -- Peter B. West Folio