On Thu, Jul 20, 2006 at 06:12:54PM +0200, Christian Weisgerber wrote: > We need some sort of policy how to deal with software written in > Java. We have a number of ports that are basically just wrappers > that install pre-compiled Java byte code.
Please have the java source in the ports tree, and the .class/.jar stuff in the packages. Without going into the political details, this is just what I would expect as a user. With ports, I want to be able to control the compilation process, apply patches and browse the source. Packages are for "just running", ports give me much more. If I do not want to waste compilation time, I use packages (which is where OpenBSD and Debian are much more sane than Gentoo or FreeBSD, where compiling from source seems to be a matter of lifestyle). The only consequence of "Java binaries run on all platforms" is that the same package files can be shared between the different hardware architectures in "packages". That is more or less the same with packages of scripting languages or documentation. Bernd
