The dummy package. You have the jdk-dummy and the jre-dummy, you can make them conflict with each other. jdk-dummy provides what Oracle's jdk doesn't for openSUSE packages, and requires Oracle's jdk, making it a bridge between the two packages. You cannot install both bridges, because they conflict.
This is where the problem starts, because Oracle rpms don't provide anything; I'll show a quick example... You build a piece of software (lets say a library) that links on JNI; for every single package you will have a lot of pre/post streaming filtering to do... Else they won't resolve (something the dummy packages will fix?)... Now the dummy packages insert all this dependencies; Then you will have dependencies overlapping, ones from openJDK, others from your dummy packages (e.g. the JNI shared objects). So you are duplicating dependencies, from which one of the packages (your dummy one) won't be able to resolve properly because you don't have Oracle stuff in repository (are you allowed to re-distribute the Oracle RPMs ?. If you support that stuff and you actually have a lot of develpors, they will create a (like Linus says) unholy mess; which you will have to support... And you can never support Oracle RPMs (and why should we? it's really OSI friendly).
You *can* install both of Oracle's rpms, but you cannot do so as a replacement to the distribution's packages (which is what the dummy packages do).
Install them from where ? :)
About the JNI stuff... I don't know about that. The only JNI stuff I used were gtk bindings with eclipse, and I've never had any trouble switching VMs at will. That doesn't rule out problems though. But, presumably, he who replaces the JVM/JDK "knows what he's doing".
That's what JNI is there to; to make sure that you have some sort of compatibility layer to use any vendor JVM (so far it's working properly, I would risk to say (blindly) that 95% of the stuff will work OK). But the problem is... When you build an RPM, it's internal dependency generator will most likely add dependencies to the JNI shared objects, which the Oracle rpm doesn't provide... This has some solutions... being one of them that the dependency is offered by your dummy package, and the other is post/pre streaming filtering. Neither of this seems reasonable to me for a wide environment like a distribution (while in a corporate environment you can twist and bend all the rules to your needs). Like I said, I would love to see this working (maybe I can learn something from it), but I think it's going to be a nightmare to maintain in a Linux distribution as Oracle hasn't really made life easier for people. Also you might have to deal with the Epochs on JDK, which is nice enough :)... I have to say one thing, I like people with determination and crazy thoughts, so I'll help testing in any way I can :) NM -- To unsubscribe, e-mail: opensuse-factory+unsubscribe@opensuse.org To contact the owner, e-mail: opensuse-factory+owner@opensuse.org