[indiana-discuss] [Fwd: [caiman-discuss] contents for slim install]

[Richard Elling]

elw at stderr.org wrote:
>> The biggest problem is that the JOGL community seems to think that 
>> JOGL libraries (jars) should be installed per-user or per-project 
>> rather than system-wide.  This is difficult for someone putting 
>> together a distribution targeting development.
> 
> Yes, this is pretty poor practice for software distribution.  It seems 
> to be relatively common among a subset of Java developers, I think 
> largely because there are some dependency mechanisms missing from 
> available Java tools that should have long ago been provided. :-)

To be fair, I can deploy my JOGL app on the web and support a substantially
large number of clients seamlessly, regardless of their OS or hardware.
Java WebStart is truly a cool way to distribute applications easily.

> There's also, perhaps, some energy being lent by the "write once, run 
> anywhere" desires folks have -- the way to 'get that', in some cases, is 
> to bundle everything you think people might need, rather than just the 
> class files that make up the application itself.

Interdependencies is a significant problem.  Recall the gnashing of teeth
when glibc rev'ed...
  -- richard