starting off

[Greg Lewis]

On Tue, Nov 11, 2008 at 01:50:16PM -0500, Chuck Robey wrote:
> after a layoff from the java language for about 10 years, I've decided to really
> make my way back.  When I was last active with Java, it was at 1.2, I guess
> right now the stable is I want to use is 1.6 (JDK6?)  I need a touch of advice
> on now to go about doing this for my FreeBSD-current box.
> 
> I've been running FreeBSD-current since way back in the FreeBSD-1.0 days, with
> some breaks on my part due to health emergencies, and I still need to get the
> Java JDK6 working.  I also want to get the 3.4 version of eclipse working, along
> with a couple of different plugins.  I don't know if using a FreeBSD port is the
> best idea froo eclipse, and I guess I need that info for the JDK6 too.
> 
> You see, it *looks* like the latest JDK6 which is native is named "Diablo", but
> I can't find any description on the web for what the Diablo means.  Also, the
> name of the tarball has "freebsd7" in it, so I need to know both what the Diablo
> means, and also if that "freebsd7" means it won't build for FreeBSD-current.
> 
> You see, I have the option of grabbing the Sun JDK6, the Linux-i386 binary, if I
> find that I can't build the Diablo either because of what that "Diablo" means,
> or because of what the FreeBSD7 means (if it's going to build on -current).
> 
> Please, could you give me some info on that?  I don't need a dissertation on
> what Java is, but I do need those 2 questions addressed, and thanks for your time.

I think Dan answered this, but just to sum up the differences:

Diablo is a Java compatible release sponsored by the FreeBSD Foundation.
It is based off of Sun's partner only sources rather than public sources
and has passed Sun's compatibility test suite.  The current Diablo release
is based on Java 6 Update 7.  It is only supported on FreeBSD 6 and 7.  If
it works on 8-CURRENT then thats great, but if it doesn't then you're
basically out of luck.

The jdk16 port is based on Sun's public source releases under the JRL.
The most recent of these is Java 6 Update 3 unfortunately, so its quite
a bit behind in that sense.  You must compile it from source.  Once
its been compiled once you can delete the bootstrapping JDK since it
can compile any port updates itself.

Note that many of the same people are involved in both ports, so its
basically the same set of patches to slightly different versions of
Sun's source when it boils down to it.

At this point it doesn't look likely that Sun is going to do any more
JRL licensed source code releases.  Rather, they are focused on OpenJDK
from a source release perspective.  There is currently an OpenJDK 7 port
to FreeBSD, but no OpenJDK 6 port.

In terms of Eclipse, I'd recommend the eclipse-devel port.  It installs
Eclipse Ganymede (3.4).  I'd install plugins directly for the most part,
a lot of the FreeBSD plugin ports are out of date I think and Eclipse has
good support for installing and managing its own plugins from what I
can tell.  I think eclipse-devel will become eclipse in the near future,
its just a matter of someone getting time to do it.

-- 
Greg Lewis                          Email   : glewis at eyesbeyond.com
Eyes Beyond                         Web     : http://www.eyesbeyond.com
Information Technology              FreeBSD : glewis at FreeBSD.org