Re: JAVA_HOME... why?

[Philip Nienhuis]

Pascal Dupuis-4 wrote
> 2012/12/11 Jordi Gutiérrez Hermoso <

> jordigh@

> >:
>> Can someone please explain to me again why we need JAVA_HOME? Why is
>> jni.h special and can't be installed and used like any other system
>> header? I can understand setting it if your Java installation is in a
>> non-default location, but it's really strange that the current trend
>> is to be telling anyone who builds Octave that they have to make sure
>> JAVA_HOME is set correctly; moreso for configure to be complaining
>> about it when it's not. The configure script doesn't complain if I
>> don't have QT_HOME or FFTW_HOME set correctly; why is Java special? I
>> am able to build Octave with Java support without JAVA_HOME. Why can't
>> anyone else?
>>
>> I'm not saying this is a stupid thing; I just want to understand the
>> problem.
>>
> 
> Because Java was developed with the idea: "Write once, run
> everywhere". Due to differences in implementations, it became "Write
> once, debug everywhere".

If you refer to the Java installation, well, to /some/ extent: yes. 

In the case of Octave we're talking about a Java bridge, which by its nature
is very different from plain Java code or installation of a JRE or JDK.

IMO it would be unfair to say that in general, Java code has to be debugged
on all platforms; that is not my experience. Once a Java JRE has been set
up, Java code generally just runs.

In Matlab one can easily hit memory limits (because ML's GUI is written in
Java, most of the room dedicated for static methods and objects is usually
taken by ML cruft). But again that is an implementation issue, not Java
itself.

Philip



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