[advocacy-discuss] OpenSolaris for Java developers?

[Kristian Rink]

Hi Bill, *;

> You did miss the point.  On OpenSolaris you type one command:
>
> $ pfexec pkg install java-dev
>
> Then you get the JDK, Netbeans, ANT, etc.  And since all of this is
> coming from the package manager updates are a one step process as well.


Sure. I can have things similar to that on Ubuntu 8.04, and yet I never so
far used them because I prefer having current versions of JDK, ant,
NetBeans, ... installed rather than those off the package repositories which
in most cases are a little older (i.e. hardy ships with NetBeans 6.0.1 ...).
But that's probably not even my problem.

What does bug me a little about this is: I wonder why discussing the
"ease"(?) of installing software is something making or not making a
platform a good choice for some kind of developer. Given that, MS Windows
hardly would be a good choice for anything, as it requires you to enter a
CD/DVD or download some files or whatever, make your way through arcane
installation routines in order to have anything available rather than even
thinking of something similar to "apt" or IPS. From that point of view
however, aren't OpenSolaris and Linux and Win32 "same as good for Java
developers", given that in most cases

- installing the JDK is a breeze and rather straightforward (the Windows
installer is trivial to use, the Unix installer is nothing more than a
self-extracting archive or an rpm),

- installing NetBeans, tomcat and glassfish at best is simply extracting
archives to somewhere and getting applications launched / work done?

Don't get me wrong, I think for beginners having packages installable via
"IPS" is not a bad thing, but I hardly think this is what does or does not
make an operating system a good choice for Java developers... ;) Not even
discussing the (dis)advantages of wrapping an application like NetBeans
(basically providing its own package manager) up in even another package
manager...

Cheers,
Kristian

-- 
Kristian Rink
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