[CentOS-docs] Suggestion for "how to" section: easy way to install the JDK?

Sun Oct 10 00:59:29 UTC 2010
Manuel Wolfshant <wolfy at nobugconsulting.ro>

On 10/09/2010 12:47 PM, Ned Slider wrote:
> On 09/10/10 08:32, Manuel Wolfshant wrote:
>
> <snip>
>
>   
>> At least the jre package (and I am almost sure jdk too) from Sun comes
>> with the following structure:
>> lrwxrwxrwx 1 root root   16 Apr 10 01:25 default ->  /usr/java/latest
>> drwxr-xr-x 7 root root 4096 Jun 28 23:34 jre1.6.0_20
>> lrwxrwxrwx 1 root root   21 Jun 28 23:35 latest ->  /usr/java/jre1.6.0_20
>>
>> Using /usr/java/latest and / or /usr/java/default in your scripts makes
>> them immune to upgrades, as long as you stick with Sun's packages (
>> which - sad but true - make the java-openjdk / gcj packages useless and
>> offer ( for the moment ) better compatibility with the real world. At
>> least from I where I stand.
>>
>>     
>
> Are these redistributable? I'm sure they are as Red Hat has Sun's Java 
> packages on it's
> RHEL Supplementary disk for RHEL5 which it (re)distributes to customers.
>
>   
As Russ has said, they are not.
> In which case why doesn't someone just repackage these and stick them in 
> CentOS Extras/rpmforge or somewhere and the problem largely goes away. 
> Or am I missing something?
>   
Yup, you miss the fact that RH [ probably ] has agreements which allow 
them to redistribute some binary-only packages (even flash player) via a 
special channel to their  customers.
> If we had decent packages that Just Worked, we wouldn't need convoluted 
> documentation on how to install Java.
>   
Indeed. Unfortunately we are not there. Not yet.
However a 3 steps procedure ( 1) download from Sun; 2) install rpm 3) 
create a symlink for your browser ) is not that bad, given the previous 
options that we had.