OpenBSD: Against all odds, I'm building Java
If you want Java in OpenBSD, it's not easy to get it. Not impossible, but definitely not easy.
First of all, it's a port, not a package, and due to Sun's licensing restrictions for Java, when you run the build on the port, you are instructed to, on your own, fetch nine files (some source, some binary) from a variety of locations and place those files in /usr/ports/distfiles.
Once I jumped through these hoops, I got a persistent checksum error with one of the files I grabbed, xalan-j_2_7_0-bin.tar.gz. In fact, the exact problem I had is described in this Daemon Forums thread.
Curiously enough, three additional downloads of xalan from two separate sites didn't solve the checksum issue.
What did cause the error to stop and the build to proceed was grabbing this line from one of the examples in the Daemon Forums thread:
SHA256 (xalan-j_2_7_0-bin.tar.gz) = h4yOtu7hVRrkMMLboFQmMphW/8BBOyAX3S1O5kjFxfc=
and replacing that same line in /usr/ports/devel/jdk/1.5/distinfo
The original line looked no different, but this swap (done as root) seemed to make everything OK, and I'm well into the build of Java (or, more specifically, jdk).
I hope to be able to run Java apps via both the Firefox and Opera Web browsers. It's one of the final missing pieces in my use of OpenBSD as my main working OS.
Right now the build continues. I'll update when it either finishes or otherwise errors out. (You can see how optimistic I am about ports in OpenBSD at this moment; not so much, that is).
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Deans Ultra Connector
I've been thinking of using OpenBSD for an embedded application that requires running (non-graphical) Java, and this post gives me pause. Do you know if the situation has improved now that OpenJDK and other GPL alternatives to Sun's Java ecosystem have reach something akin to maturity?
I haven't installed Java in OpenBSD in quite some time. Back when I wrote this post, it was quite an ordeal.
I did add Java to FreeBSD about a year ago, and that was no walk in the park either.
It makes you appreciate the packaging in Linux. It also makes you appreciate the many thousands of other applications that are sufficiently free to be packaged for BSD in such a way as to allow you to install them without jumping through a myriad of hoops.
I've reduced my reliance on Java to such a point that I really don't need to install it these days in Linux or BSD.