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Re: Bug#786895: lintian: incompatible-java-bytecode-format warning needs update for Java 1.7

On 2015-05-26 17:25, Thorsten Glaser wrote:
> On Tue, 26 May 2015, Niels Thykier wrote:
> 
>> I agree that the is a good idea to clarify this.  My personal
>> recommendation is to declare that:
>>
>>  * gcj-jdk is not considered a suitable Java implementation for our end
>>    users nor for implementing the default-java.
> 
> Please do not do that. Way too much software, even *really* deep
> down in the cycle, things like gettext, depend on default-jdk and
> build java versions of their libraries. Even if they don’t work
> as well as the OpenJDK versions, or don’t work at all, they still
> prevent the source packages FTBFSing and provide Build-Depends for
> lots of other packages.
> 

While a valid concern, I personally disagree that this is sufficient
reason to keep the "silently broken" behaviour, which is our status quo.
 That said, as I am not going to implement the change, I am not the one
you need to convince.

> If you really want to go this route, please ensure that Debian can
> still work on OpenJDK-less architectures first, by removing the
> java packages from all those source packages.
> 
> Thanks.
> 
> bye,
> //mirabilos
> 

This is certainly a possible solution.  Another would be to make them
build-depend on gcj-jdk, if they are truly java5 compatible.  I believe
gettext is mostly in the latter category - my guess is that they have
not touched those bindings considerably in many years.

My concern with gcj-jdk implementing default-java is that it leads to
silent breakage because gcj-jdk is stuck in ("almost") Java5 support
while Debian is moving to OpenJDK-8 with lambda functions, tons of new
classes etc.  This breakage is /not/ discovered by us, but by our end
users that consumes ports without OpenJDK support and I think that is
the wrong signal to send to our users.

Thanks,
~Niels
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