I'm afraid that I agree with Matt. As much as I like the idea of abstract dependencies it seems that it will become much more complex and much harder than just depending on a runtime that is known to work. The core issue being that there are far fewer VMs than there are possible base class library dependencies. Easier just to say "j2sdk1.4 | kaffe | orp" if that is what is known to work.
On Tue, 2003-09-02 at 10:40, Matt Zimmerman wrote: > The problem, as I see it, is that Java core classes are grouped into > entities like "JDK 1.2", when, by and large, these groups are not > represented in Debian (or in free Java in general). Instead, they implement > some subset of this functionality. However, the classes are still grouped > this way in the JVM (rt.jar and such). So we can neither have useful > JDK-level dependencies (because they're never met), nor can we have useful > package- or class-level dependencies, because you can't mix and match core > classes. > > The most practical solution at this point seems to be what everyone is doing > anyway, which is to use or-expressions which reflect what actually works, > and not an abstract idea of what is provided. For example, a package which > works with any java2 runtime, but also works with the interfaces provided by > kaffe, uses "java2-runtime | kaffe", etc. -- _____________________________________________________________________ Ean Schuessler [EMAIL PROTECTED] Brainfood, Inc. http://www.brainfood.com
