On Fri, Oct 16, 2015 at 12:35 AM, Kay Schenk <kay.sch...@gmail.com> wrote:
> > > On 10/15/2015 01:58 PM, Marcus wrote: > > Am 10/15/2015 09:58 PM, schrieb Dennis E. Hamilton: > >> [...] > >> > >> If we are not going to install a suitable JRE as part of AOO binary > >> installers, how should we make it more clear that Java is required > >> for what > >> might seem to be essential functions? > >> > >> [...] > > > > I don't know since when a JRE is needed inside OpenOffice for a few > > functions, maybe since ever. And since OpenOffice is at Apache there > > was no code change. The only change was that a JRE is no longer > > included when downloading OpenOffice. > > > > So, I expect that the users know since a longer time that they need > > a JRE when they want these functions. Additionally there are > > messages shown that a JRE is needed. > > > > Marcus > > The need for Java is detailed in the System Requirements -- > http://www.openoffice.org/dev_docs/source/sys_reqs_aoo41.html > > linked from the Download page. What I found "startling" was the > message that Java 6 is needed on Macintosh, which I was not aware > of. We've switched to Java 7 for sure for Windows and Linux builds. > The lack of a Mac buildbot makes tracking these kinds of anomalies > difficult. > > Maybe it's time we investigate an alternate way of providing the > same functionality without Java? > Q. Where did the names “C” and “C++” come from? A. They were grades. —Jerry Leichtre, UNIX hater's handbook Java is a first class UNO language ( https://wiki.openoffice.org/wiki/Documentation/DevGuide/AdvUNO/Advanced_UNO) capable of both using and implementing UNO components. It's been open-source for 9 years, ported to countless platforms ( https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Comparison_of_Java_virtual_machines) and there is an ocean of high quality open source software in Java online, a lot of it liberally licensed, and a lot of software at Apache is written in Java. Unlike Basic, the Java language has excellent tooling and refactoring support in IDEs, and not only far easier to develop in than C/C++, but also memory-safe and thus secure against buffer overflow exploits, and is JITed for high performance instead of Basic's slow interpretation. We pay an enormous ongoing cost with C/C++: discouraging new developers from joining, making portability harder as patches have to be built and tested on each platform, 32/64 bit issues such as #112383, crashes instead of exceptions that can be caught, and it's a large attack surface for future security exploits. The real reason we suffer with dmake/gbuild is C/C++. So I have the opposite proposal: port more of AOO to Java, develop new innovations primarily in Java, and generally use even more Java from now on. It's that Mac buildbot that is badly needed. Also in terms of the JVM bitness issue, can't we detect the JVM bitness at download time from the Java plugin, and get users to download AOO of the matching bitness? Damjan
