* Egon Willighagen <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> [010402 22:58]: > Op dinsdag 03 april 2001 02:43, schreef Per Bothner: > > I'd like to make some progress on standard Linux/GNU installation > > standards for Java, and how GCJ fits into this.
(Per, glad to see you are interested in making Java as cool in Debian as native stuff is handled currently. :) > > With this setup: > > (1) All Java compilers and VMs can compile find all "installed" .jars, > > without users having to fiddle with classpaths. > > An second option is to have a system wide CLASSPATH set, that would > include all jars... I do not like this idea. There are several reasons. The first is that Policy forbids any program to require environment variables to run properly. The second is the simple question of "where should CLASSPATH be set?" (Many other Linux distros would just do this in the systemwide /etc/bashrc -- Debian is *much* faster to login to as a result of the mess in other systems. :) The third is that each compiler/runtime system can have unique requirements for the CLASSPATH environment variable. (e.g., I think the JDK 1.3 from Sun does not want CLASSPATH set unless the circumstances are great, compared to JDK 1.1, which needed CLASSPATH set for anything to work at all. IIRC.) So, not all compiler/runtime systems could even share the one CLASSPATH. All told, I think we can do better than CLASSPATH, though I do not work with enough different Java systems to know what that better system is. -- Earthlink: The #1 provider of unsolicited bulk email to the Internet.