[Kde-bindings] Re: [Kde-java] Should we ditch support for Sun's JDK in favour of Free Software?

[adrian.dimulescu at free.fr]

>>From my point of view, developing with the JDK runtime and
>>distributing the compiled binaries would be ideal
> 
> 
> Why ?

Because Eclipse (here we go again ;) does a great job as an IDE as long 
as one uses the Java in the "classical" fashion, as interpreted 
bytecode. Some other people may like their own IDE's NetBeans, Idea etc.

But, distributing KDE applications as Java jars may be a pain for users, 
as long as it does not follow the standard "./configure && make all 
install" scheme. Many packaging systems are based on the assumption that 
things get compiled that way.

Distributing jars would ask Linux users to install a JRE which is not a 
very user-friendly process under Linux. It may work for java-aware users 
but when you do KDEJava, you do it because you like KDE and want to be 
KDE-friendly. And KDE users may only know that Java exists from news on 
slashdot, that "java sucks because it's slow", that kind of information.

 >>-- that is, until an opensource jdk becomes standard part of any
 >>   distribution.
 >
 >
 > Most distributions ship gij, gcj and fastjar, and these can be argued
 > to form a more or less complete JDK, no ?

I imagine that when a complete opensource JDK becomes part of standard 
linux distributions, the concept of executable file could be extended to 
Java code, allowing a user, say, to click on a jar and start the 
program. Yes you can do that even now in Konqueror, Nautilus etc. if you 
customize them but, it's not widespread technique. People still don't 
know what to do with jars.

The actual state of open source jre's does not allow this. Swing 
applications can't be run, etc. Please correct me if I'm wrong.


That's a lot of words from the beginner in KDE that I am, but hey talk 
does not cost money that's one good thing already.

Best regards,
Adrian.