Re: Bug#290377: classpath-common: why don't you provide a jar archive ?

[Andrew John Hughes]

On Mon, 2005-01-17 at 06:45, jewel wrote:
> Do all classpath VMs have native code to load jar files? Does it make
> sense to distribute a jar instead?
> 
> John Leuner
> 
> On Fri, 2005-01-14 at 03:13, Vincent Fourmond wrote:
> > Package: classpath-common
> > Version: 2:0.13-3
> > Severity: wishlist
> > 
> > 
> >   Hello !
> > 
> >   I was wondering why you don't provide a jar archive ? It seems to me that 
> > it is the standard way of 
> > providing libraries in java - not all of the JVM recognise directly a zip 
> > file...
> > 
> >   Thanks for considering this !
> > 
> >     Vincent Fourmond
> > 
> > 
> > 
> > -- System Information:
> > Debian Release: 3.1
> >   APT prefers unstable
> >   APT policy: (500, 'unstable'), (500, 'testing')
> > Architecture: i386 (i686)
> > Kernel: Linux 2.6.7
> > Locale: LANG=C, LC_CTYPE=C (charmap=ANSI_X3.4-1968)
> > 
> > -- no debconf information
> > 
> 
> 
> 
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I don't know about native code for JARs but:

* All Classpath VMs must support reading the Classpath library classes
either from class files or a zip or they wouldn't be
classpath-supporting.  You can't just use this zip with another VM, such
as Sun's, as it requires implementations of the VM classes.  So, the
Classpath zip is not like the other JARs anyway.
* A JAR is simply a zip with a manifest, AFAIK.  The manifest provides
metadata about the zipped classes, such as the main method (which
obviously isn't required for Classpath).  So, if there is native
handling, it should handle zip as a subset of JARs.  In some cases,
going merely on extension is a fairly broken way of determining file
type anyway.

To be honest, I'm all for keeping the Classpath libraries as a zip,
because it makes them distinct from other 'normal' libraries.  However,
this would obviously have to change if we wanted to use metadata.
-- 
Andrew :-)

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