On Mon, 2006-04-10 at 10:11 -0700, Dan Thurman wrote: > Please tell me what I need to do to keep up to date with java > packages. It depends what packages you're interested in. If you're talking about packages provided in FC/FE, then just yum and you're done. If you're talking about other packages, then I recommend helping port them to Fedora. > I *thought* via jpackages I would get all the wonderful > stuff as in FC4 but apparently FC5 has made a "clean break" from > JPackages group? Is this what you are saying? JPackage packages many useful programs we feel should be part of the core OS (or Extras). There are two main problems with JPackage usage right now: 1. Dependencies on non-free packages. I believe the JPackage team is working to fix this. I'm not sure what the latest status is. 2. Inability to build (and run) with Free software. We need to be able to build everything in FC/FE with Free Software. Unfortunately, many JPackaged packages cannot be built with Free Software. This used to be because our Free tools and libraries weren't mature, but now mostly it seems due to the Java Trap. Unfortunately, many packages depend on proprietary extensions to the Java platform (sun.*, com.sun.*, etc). The good news is that upstream projects are slowly cleaning up their act. Batik recently removed sun.*/com.sun.* uses so it can be built with Free software. But, due to the high degree of interdependency between Java packages, all we need is one bad package to prevent us from building many others. AG
