Package: java-common Version: 0.22 Severity: wishlist
I propose to change the following paragraph in section 2.4. of the Debian Java policy
> Java libraries must depend on the needed runtime environment > (java1-runtime and/or java2-runtime) but should not depend (only > suggest) java-virtual-machine.
to:
Java library packages must depend on other library packages if they can't be used without them. If other libraries are only required by parts of the library, they should suggest the required library package instead.
Reasons:
1. Currently library packages are not required to depend on other libraries that they use. A dependency should not be used when only parts of a library require other libraries, for example as in ant-optional.jar. It's then up to the packager of a Java application to decide which other JARs are really required.
2. Dependencies on java*-runtime don't make a lot of sense:
java*-runtime are both virtual packages and packages always should depend on "real_package | virtual_package" (so apt and others know what to do when they are first installed). Most Java libraries have a dependency like "classpath | java1-runtime | java2-runtime". This will keep them from migration to testing since the real package that provides java*-runtime might not be available for all architectures.
It's almost impossible to determine if a library works with java1-runtime and/or java2-runtime. This can only be decided when you have an applications that uses the library. For example, tomcat4 can now be run with Kaffe 1.1.3 so a lot of libtomcat4-java's dependencies actually work without a full "Java 2 runtime environment" although they depend on "java2-runtime".
3. Depending on java-common (IIRC this was mandated by a previos version of the Java Policy) is also not needed since there's nothing but documentation in java-common. This might change if we put some scripts to automatically generate a class path in java-common.
4. Libraries are supposed to work with any JVM so depending on known-to-work JVM packages is also not sensible: One library might depend on kaffe, another one on sablevm. An application which uses them both might work with Kaffe but dpkg would insist on installing SableVM even if it's not required.
To summarize: I'd like to move the task of determining the actual dependencies to the packagers of Java applications. They can test them with specific JVM packages and know which "optional" JARs are required to run the application.
Stefan
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