Robert Miner wrote: > Hello all. > > We have a software product that requires the installation of > client-side Java classes. We used to do this with SmartUpdate, and > I'm trying to come up with an acceptible xpinstall equivalent. From > my own experiments, and from reading this list, it seems there are two > possible strategies: > > 1) locate the copy of the JRE that Netscape 6 is using, and place the > class files in the lib/applet directory > > 2) install the classes somewhere appropriate in the Netscape 6 tree, > and modify the CLASSPATH > > However, neither of these is very satisfactory. In case 1, there > seems to be no dependable cross-platform method of finding the proper > JRE, and in case 2, there is no dependable, side-effect free way of > modifying the CLASSPATH. Thus, we appear to be facing writing a fair > amount of platform-dependent executable code that probably won't work > very well anyway.
You've basically got it. Unlike SmartUpdate, which was written in Java, XPInstall can't really count on Java being available or where it might be. At the point we decided to punt on that feature we couldn't come up with any reliable mechanism, and until now no one has really asked for the feature back. Poking around just now the nsIJVMPlugin interface might be something we could use (http://lxr.mozilla.org/mozilla/source/modules/oji/public/nsIJVMPlugin.h) You might have better luck getting Sun folks to add this into XPInstall; you'll find them over in the .oji and .java newsgroups rather than here. -Dan Veditz
