Blair Zajac wrote:
The only reason I see to compile a Java port is if you are patching the source code. Isn't running the supplied jar just like running the supplied binary ? Seems more like a question of binary blob versus open source to me...
I don't think the comparison with binary packages is entirely fair. Jar files fall in between source packages and complete binary ones. You can relocate a jar file without it breaking, but you can't relocate a binary package with dylibs, say if you want to move /opt/local into /Users/blair/my-macports. You have to recompile. There's also too many customizations people like to do with source releases, look at all our variants. You don't find many variants in Java packages.
But just because they're relocatable and not many want to customize, doesn't make them not binary ? We are talking about regular .jar files with .class code here, right - and not .zip cousins with .java source, or something ?
And I think saying "open source" is just mixing different concepts in this discussion.
I might have misunderstood the original suggestion, I thought it said something like "why bother compiling the source when using the binary works better" ? Didn't mean to introduce a difference concept... --anders