Hi, the program which needed JAVA_HOME was 'ant'; it might have had to do with the fact that I had the JDK and JRE packages both installed with some alternatives (java) pointing to the JRE and some (javac) to the JDK. But, anyway, I had to define JAVA_HOME to make it work.
And I thought that what I proposed is aligned with the policy rule you are listing (and which I considered in my thoughts). If /usr/lib/java is defined as the default alternative for the JAVA_HOME directory, I can, in my program, script, Makefile, rule-file, set JAVA_HOME to the default /usr/lib/java value, giving the user a chance to overrule this through his own definition of JAVA_HOME. Am I clear? :-) I am not saying JAVA_HOME should be set to /usr/lib/java, I am saying that /usr/lib/java could be created as alternative to be used as default value for JAVA_HOME within programs. But if you think that my configuration is broken, and ant shouldn't need JAVA_HOME, then I'll try to fix it myself. Actually I think I already fixed it by removing the JRE and re-linking the different alternatives to the JDK (but I don't notice because JAVA_HOME is defined in my Makefile). Eric > -----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE----- > Hash: SHA1 > > tags 283557 + wontfix > thanks > > Mon, 29 Nov 2004 22:02:06 +0100, > Eric Lavarde <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: > >> Hi, > > Hi, > >> my suggestion would be to define the directory /usr/lib/java as default >> java-home, so that someone can define a default value for the variable >> JAVA_HOME, which some utilities seem to require. >> I think of something like the following in a shell script: >> ${JAVA_HOME:=/usr/lib/java} > > ,----[ /usr/share/doc/debian-policy/policy.txt ] > | 9.9. Environment variables > | -------------------------- > | > | A program must not depend on environment variables to get > | reasonable defaults. (That's because these environment variables > | would have to be set in a system-wide configuration file like > | `/etc/profile', which is not supported by all shells.) > | [...] > `---- > > Which program does need JAVA_HOME? and why? IMHO this is not a clean > design. > > Cheers, > > PS: If someone else wanna take care of this bug, just remove the > 'wontfix' tag. > -- Eric de France, d'Allemagne et de Navarre