[PLUG] pdftk gcj dependencies (was: Re: Banning package(es) for good in Debian and Ubuntu)

[Rogan Creswick]

On Wed, Oct 29, 2008 at 11:30 AM, Rich Shepard <rshepard at appl-ecosys.com> wrote:
> On Wed, 29 Oct 2008, Rogan Creswick wrote:
>> $ aptitude install pdftk
>> <snip>
>> The following NEW packages will be installed:
>>  gcj-4.2-base libgcj-common libgcj8-1 libgcj8-1-awt libgcj8-jar pdftk
>
>   While this doesn't answer your ubuntu question, I see that the
> pdftk.Slackbuild file uses gcc on pdftk's Makefile.Generic. No java
> involved. Strange that ubuntu requires it.

The Makefile.Generic delegates to Makefile.Base, which in turn
delegates to java_libs/Makefile, and that invokes a makefile in each
java package, using ${GCJ} (which is defined in Makefile.Generic).

By Java standards, this is an extremely odd way to structure a
project, and it's quite unfortunate that gcj is so tightly coupled
with the build process.  I would like to use pdftk, but I am not about
to put up with gcj for one application.

--Rogan



> Rich
>
> --
> Richard B. Shepard, Ph.D.               |  Integrity            Credibility
> Applied Ecosystem Services, Inc.        |            Innovation
> <http://www.appl-ecosys.com>     Voice: 503-667-4517      Fax: 503-667-8863
> _______________________________________________
> PLUG mailing list
> PLUG at lists.pdxlinux.org
> http://lists.pdxlinux.org/mailman/listinfo/plug
>