On Fri, Apr 29, 2005 at 10:10:09AM +0300, Kalle Kivimaa wrote: > Barry Hawkins <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> writes: > > The JDKs are packaged by make-jpkg are non-free, and as such, we do not > > tamper with the javac, java, etc. commands of any vendor's JRE/JDK. > > People expect that sort of thing to be left the way the vendor made it, > > and currently (for better or worse) a java command from any of them does > > not attempt to set JAVA_HOME or other environmental variables itself. > > Basically what I'm wondering is what should our Java packaging policy > be related to packages requiring java2-compiler to build. Should they > check for the existence of a non-free compiler which requires the > JAVA_HOME or can they just assume the behaviour of say jikes? I think > this should be consistent and documented in the policy so that both > the maintainers and users are on the same page. > > Currently the situation is that I could blindly go and close the same > bug against JSPWiki by simply saying that java2-compiler should not > require any extra environment to work and if some non-free > implementation does require that, it is not a problem of a free Debian > package. I'm not entirely comfortable with that and that's why I would > like it be consistently either JAVA_HOME supported or not.
The Debian Policy § 9.9 clearly says: "A program must not depend on environment variables to get reasonable defaults." Setting an environment variable in debian/rules for build is okay but no software should depend on them during runtime. If it does we need to provide a wrapper. Michael -- Escape the Java Trap with GNU Classpath! http://www.gnu.org/philosophy/java-trap.html Join the community at http://planet.classpath.org/