Why compile Java ports and commons-logging
Anders F Björklund
afb at macports.org
Tue Feb 5 13:35:35 PST 2008
Blair Zajac wrote:
>>> The only reason I see to compile a Java port is if you are patching
>>> the source code.
>> Isn't running the supplied jar just like running the supplied binary ?
>> Seems more like a question of binary blob versus open source to me...
>
> I don't think the comparison with binary packages is entirely fair.
> Jar files fall in between source packages and complete binary ones.
> You can relocate a jar file without it breaking, but you can't
> relocate a binary package with dylibs, say if you want to move
> /opt/local into /Users/blair/my-macports. You have to recompile.
> There's also too many customizations people like to do with source
> releases, look at all our variants. You don't find many variants in
> Java packages.
But just because they're relocatable and not many want to customize,
doesn't make them not binary ? We are talking about regular .jar files
with .class code here, right - and not .zip cousins with .java source,
or something ?
> And I think saying "open source" is just mixing different concepts in
> this discussion.
I might have misunderstood the original suggestion, I thought it said
something like "why bother compiling the source when using the binary
works better" ? Didn't mean to introduce a difference concept...
--anders
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