Nelson Minar wrote:
>
> >Anyways, what occurred to me during the new years break is to arrange
> >my java stuff into a file system along the lines used in linux
> >systems (unix in general?).
>
> It might make sense for the Java Linux principles to work with some of
> the major distribution folks and the people behind the Linux
> filesystem standard to come up with a standard Java directory tree for
> Linux.
I think this would be great, especially if it encouraged the
distribution makers to include more java stuff in the distributions, at
the moment in redhat at least, they don't seem to include any java apps
and only the kaffe vm.
Also when I came up with this I was hoping for it to be x-platform, as
it is now I think it could be used on a Win (Mac ??) platform as readily
as on unix.
> The main requirements I see are:
>
> Dealing with the way the JDK wants to be installed. At least in JDK
> 1.1, it's quite inflexible about where its pieces are.
Agreed. This is why my initial thinking is putting all jvm dependent
stuff outside my porposed dir-structure.
> Nicely supporting the new Java 1.2 class loading system, in
> particular the support for a directory of jars.
This is what I had in mind for the zlib directory. I'm not sure how JDK
1.2 wants to have the javax dirs setup (I'll have to read up on this)
but I'm sure there should be a way of getting this to work.
> Making it easy for people to install new jar files and new shared
> libraries for the JVM to load.
>
> Making it easy to install alternate Java implementations - a new VM
> (Kaffe or Japhar), new class libraries (Classpath), etc.
I didn't have this in mind when I thought up my proposal, but I have
been pondering exactly the issues you mention about jars, libraries (and
class-lib versioning) and different jvm operation/intergration for a
long time now.
At the moment the whole thing is a mess, it takes an effort just to set
things up for 2 different jvms to be installed on the same machine, let
alone all the hassles to get things to work with one or the other - in
terms of classpaths, compiling and running using different class-libs &
jvm's.
Personally I think some kind of app would be needed to manage a
"wholistic" java system on a machine, looking after different jvm's
their classlibs, other system-wide libs (and their different
versions/releases) and then specific java-app classes(in or out of
jars). Please note that I'm looking at this from a workstation point of
view, I'm sure the issues for servers are probably even more
complicated. If anyone has any non-patented thoughts on this ;-), I'd
be happy to hear them.
> [EMAIL PROTECTED]
> . . . . . . . . http://www.media.mit.edu/~nelson/
Thanks for the response Nelson, I've enjoyed your posts on dist-obj,
anymore comments are welcome.
Maksim.
--
Maksim Lin
"...handing C++ to the average programmer seems roughly comparable to
handing a loaded .45 to a chimpanzee."
-- Ted Ts'o
