[conspire] installing java as a debian package under 4.0r0

[Rick Moen]

Quoting Eric De Mund (ead-conspire at ixian.com):

> Installing Sun's Java Runtime Environment (JRE) under Debian used to be
> a multistep affair that involved [1] converting a Sun jre*.bin file to
> .deb, [2] "dpkg -i"-installing that created package, and then [3]
> creating a symbolic link from a Sun /usr/lib/.../plugin/i386/ns7/libjava
> plugin_oji.so file either to one in ~/.mozilla/plugins or in /usr/lib/
> {mozilla,firefox}/plugins.

Until the very recent re-release of _most_ of Java's development code
under GPLv2, all Sun JRE software has been under Sun's highly
restrictive "Operating System Distributor License for Java" (DLJ), which
didn't permit inclusion of, e.g., packages sun-java5-jre and
sun-java5-plugin (which are based on Blackdown porting code, by the way)
into Debian proper, but _was_ permissive enough to allow their inclusion
in the Non-free package collection.  (I'm pretty sure Debian hasn't yet
had time to package the newly GPLed code, quality issues aside.)

However, the drill you cited wasn't necessary:  All of the stages you
list _were_ automated by the "java-package" installation wrapper script
in the Contrib collection, which automated exactly the steps you list,
among others.  See:
http://packages.debian.org/stable/misc/java-package

Debian frequently uses that method (installers in "Contrib") to reduce
the pain factor of proprietary code installation to the minimum
possible.  "Contrib" houses packages that are themselves open-source,
but depend on code that is not.  Therefore, it's useful to browse its
catalogue for installation wrappers, if tempted to resort to upstream
tarballs -- or to funky binary .debs in Non-free -- for some piece of
proprietary software.

E.g., the pine-src package for the Pine MUA pulled down proprietary Pine
source tarballs and automatically patched and then compiled a binary
.deb from that code.  (Later, pine-src was scuttled because of incessant
security problems.  It was just too much hassle.)

By the way, U. of Washington's recent beta releases of "Alpine" =
next-generation Pine-redesign under Apache License 2.0 have finally
allowed a maintained, properly packaged version for Pine users on
Debian:  For those interested, package "alpine" is now available in
v.083+dfsg-2 for Debian-testing "lenny", and 0.99+dfsg-1 for
Debian-unstable "sid".  U. of W. is still calling 0.99 an "alpha"
release, but reports are good.