[Glastonbury] New to it

[Ian Dickinson]

maurice <mail at mauricebutler.co.uk> wrote: 
> I'm looking to download and install the Java Runtime
> Engine. The download site 
> offered a heinz variety of installations. Any
> thoughts please on which one I  need?
Are you going to do Java development, or just run Java
applications?

If you just want to run Java programs, download and
install the JDK 1.5.0 JRE (Java runtime environment)
.rpm from the Sun site (start at http://java.sun.com).
Confusingly, Sun market JRE verion 1.5.0 as "Java 5".
Unless you have special requirements (like running
Java on a phone), you want Java 5 Standard Edition,
aka J5SE.

If you want to develop Java apps, I strongly recommend
using jpackage.org.  But, there's a bit of a catch. 
JPackage use a particular Java .rpm configuration, and
the other tools they package depend on having their
particular Java configuration.  However, due to
licensing conditions from Sun, they can't distribute
their own repackaging of the JDK (Java development
kit) .rpm. So what they distribute is a source .rpm,
which gives you a script you can run to build their
.rpm, using the binary download from Sun (which you
download and, consequently, you accept the license
terms that Sun impose).  If all this sounds a bit
daunting, be reassured that it's pretty
straightforward if you just follow the instructions. 
Once you have the JDK rpm installed, and apt-get or
yum configured to see the JPackage repository, you can
just say, for example,

yum install ant 

to install the latest version of Jakarta Ant, and yum
upgrade will keep it up-to-date for you.

There are also other JDK implementations, e.g. from
Blackdown and IBM.  My experience is that the Sun
versions work most reliably and fastest.  Use the JDK
1.5.0 version, unless you have a special need to
generate code that can only run on older JVM's.

Ian



	
	
		
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