Piecing together free java [LWN.net]

Piecing together free java

Posted Nov 21, 2007 15:18 UTC (Wed) by mjw (subscriber, #16740)
In reply to: Piecing together free java by arekm
Parent article: Piecing together free java

You have to have GCJ http://gcc.gnu.org/java installed already yes, that is what IcedTea
relies on. But that is availably on most GNU/Linux distros since a couple of years.

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Piecing together free java

Posted Nov 21, 2007 16:33 UTC (Wed) by nix (subscriber, #2304) [Link]

Well, you need a 1.5-capable GCJ, which isn't as old as a couple of years :) but anyone can
get it out of the appropriate branch or (if daring) from GCC SVN HEAD (although using the GCC
in SVN HEAD without appropriate genuflections can, I understand, cause ifrits to emerge from
your machine for entirely innocent technical reasons).

Piecing together free java

Posted Nov 21, 2007 17:32 UTC (Wed) by arekm (subscriber, #4846) [Link]

Yeah, I just tried it and it failed with gcc 4.2.2 gcj (1.4.2). So bootstraping icedtea
requires unreleased gcj :-(

Piecing together free java

Posted Nov 21, 2007 16:56 UTC (Wed) by drag (subscriber, #31333) [Link]

Yep. 

If you have OpenOffice.org installed from your distribution's package management systems then
more then likely you have GCJ installed. Redhat put a lot of effort into both with the goal of
getting OO.org (and other popular java-based apps) out of the 'Java Trap' and such, if I
remember correctly.

Piecing together free java

Posted Nov 21, 2007 19:47 UTC (Wed) by mjw (subscriber, #16740) [Link]

Yes, Red Hat has been very supportive of all the libre-java efforts. This is also why on Fedora 7 or 8 things just work and build out of the box. But with some small tweaks, as documented on the IcedTea Wiki FAQ, Debian and Gentoo systems can also bootstrap things now. In fact icedtea.classpath.org runs Debian and has a Debian sid chroot in which IcedTea is regularly bootstrapped with the system installed GCJ.