[ Responding to old mail. The issue was whether Java packages should depend on both java-virtual-machine and java1/2-runtime. ]
On Fri, Oct 05, 2001 at 05:18:29PM +0200, Ola Lundqvist wrote: > > If all jvm packages out there specified whether they were java1-runtime > > or java2-runtime compliant (or both), then all java packages could > > depend on the runtime they require ? > > With this sheme it is possible to create a package that only provides > the binary java (with a couple of other usefulthings) and an other package > providing the core classes. I'm updating the policy right now because it > want to fix the dependencies. It's possible the other way, too. The idea is, Java applications and libraries just depend on a runtime virtual package. Integrated VM + runtime packages provide the runtime directly. Add-on runtimes provide the runtime, and depend on java-virtual-machine, which can presumably be provided by both standalone VM's, and VM + runtime packages. Actually, this part may need to be more fine-grained: you might need to specify the extension mechanism for the VM in the dependency, eg java-virtual-machine-jni, java-virtual-machine-kni, java-virtual-machine-cni. There might be other things I am missing too, but I think the idea is right. It's definitely simpler and cleaner for Java applications and libraries to depend on just one virtual package. Of course, you might need some more glue to tie this all together (eg, making sure that the VM finds the appropriate runtime libraries), but that is a separate issue (which the registry idea tackles). Andrew
