> >I'm not really comfortable with the idea of "don't test, just assume it > >works until someone tells you otherwise". Yes, it happened with flex > >but that was a once-off. With this java proposal it will become > >institutionalised. > > It is already institutionalised. > ...
Yes, but in the old policy it's clear that we don't really know what works and what doesn't. In the new proposal, we claim to specify precisely which VMs work with which package, and so if we encourage maintainers to make such claims without actually testing the different VMs, this will be come a kind of "institutionalised dishonesty". Let me make it clear that I'm not arguing against your JVM dependencies per se. I'm arguing against the proposed method of maintaining these dependencies, which is "don't bother testing packages across JVM changes, just wait for the bug reports". > > Most users will anyway only install one version of a virtual maschine. > > This I find unlikely, especially if packages are explicitly depending on > > known-working JVMs. The more java packages I have installed, the more > > likely it is that dependencies require me to have a variety of different > > JVMs on my system. > > Lets say it this way: user wants a browser plugin (this is IMO still > the only thing, which they know as 'JAVA' (sic!)). So they will go to > sun and get the -bin download. Then they will hopefully look into a > FAQ, which will (someday) say, that they should run mpkg-j2sdk (or > mpkg-java, if it becomes that flexible) on the downloaded -bin and > dpkg -i the resulting packages. Right, so you just expect users to download a JVM directly from sun, make their *own* JVM packages and then use these exclusively for java on debian? So why bother making a Java policy at all? Btw, one of the great strengths of the main debian policy is to ensure that packages interact properly even with unusual systems or installations. So even if "most users" will just exclusively use a hand-rolled non-free JVM package, I will argue that the java policy should also work well for those few users who actually do things the way that we suggest they do, i.e., install a pre-built JVM package (or packages) made by one of the official debian packagers, or get their JVMs through the dependency system (and thus quite possibly have several JVMs installed as described above). Ben. :)