Re: [PATCH] Rename icedtea{6,7}.

[Ricardo Wurmus]

Ludovic Courtès <address@hidden> writes:

> Ricardo Wurmus <address@hidden> skribis:
>
>> The following patches rename the packages “icedtea6” and “icedtea7” to
>> just “icedtea”, and the variables “icedtea6” and “icedtea7” to
>> “icedtea-6” and “icedtea-7”.  They also add a default “icedtea”, which
>> is just an alias for “icedtea-7”.  Packages needing a JDK or JRE can now
>> just add “icedtea” to their inputs.
>
> This sounds reasonable to me, but what’s the rationale?  Is it that
> people have no reason to use the older version?

Yes, there is no good reason to use an older version than 7, as 7 can be
made to produce code for older JREs.

>> As soon as IcedTea 8/3.0.0 is released I’d like to remove the
>> “icedtea-6” package.  “icedtea-7” has to stay around because “icedtea-8”
>> cannot be bootstrapped with GCJ any more; it needs a more recent JDK.
>
> Bah, pity, but good that we already have everything.

GCJ unfortunately only implements Java 1.5 (and that only works because
they use a prebuilt binary of the Eclipse compiler since 2007).  Later
JDKs demand a compiler for Java 1.6+.

It would be nice if GCJ were updated to support 1.6.  The latest version
of GNU Classpath already contains some support for 1.6 APIs, but is
incomplete compared to OpenJDK6:

  http://builder.classpath.org/japi/openjdk6-classpath.html

I’m pushing these commits in a few minutes.  Thanks for the review!

~~ Ricardo