Eclipse package dependencies

[Derek Broughton]

Andrew Jarrett wrote:

> On 5/3/07, Jochen Wurster <jochen.wurster at gmx.net> wrote:
>>
>> why does the eclipse package(s) depend on gij (GNU Java)? IMHO Sun Java 6
>> would be a better choice.
>> I am using Kubuntu 7.04.
>>
> IANAE, but it may have to do with the fact that java is not completely
> free (as in speech) software yet.   It is just an educated guess, but
> they may have wanted to support gij because it is part of the
> completely free gcj project.

I have no problem with a dependency that is fashioned as "gij | java2-sdk"
(or whatever the dependencies are actually called) - that ensures that if
you have _no_ JRE, a free version is used, and if you have any other usable
JRE, _it_ is used, but I really object to packages telling me they know
what's best for me - _especially_ when that "best" is Java related.

I also understand that Eclipse is committed to working under the free JRE
(that is, eclipse itself will run with gij, not that projects it compiles
will necessarily do so) and can not actually guarantee that absolutely any
package that provides "java2-sdk" will be sufficient, but imo that's
adequately handled by requiring a default of gij, but permitting any
java2-sdk.
-- 
derek