[Nix-dev] Java support in Firefox, or java in general

[Lluís Batlle i Rossell]

On Thu, May 24, 2012 at 10:07:41PM +0200, Vladimír Čunát wrote:
> > There is 'openjdk'... I think Shlevy worked with it. I don't really know much
> > about what jvm we should use for java.
> 
> I did some quick probe of the most popular distributions and it seems
> that openjdk is the default everywhere. Often without any alternative,
> so I suppose there are some reasons for it and it also means there
> should be no problems running java apps.
> 
> I'm really out of time recently (and the whole last year), so don't
> wait for me to fix it.

Just to give an answer in this thread....

The jdk6's plugin is linked with libstdc++5 (gcc 3.3!); So, unless you
LD_PRELOAD that libstdc++5 (or simply using LD_LIBRARY_PATH, I can't remember
now), it will crash with a failing symbol.

gcc 3.3 builds only for i686 now on linux; nevertheless we could have the
firefox wrapper care of that preload. That will make firefoxWrapper fail to
build with jre on x86_64, but that's a build error at least. Or someone could
fix gcc 3.3 for x86_64 too. :)

Oracle (or Sun) never released the source code of a JRE plugin; the icedtea
people (icedtea.classpath.org) wrote such a browser pluging, and provide the
source, but I still have not managed to build icedtea. I've a branch in my
github, if anyone wants to play with it:
https://github.com/viric/nixpkgs/tree/icedtea

Ludovic tried to build icedtea some time ago, and committed the expressions I
worked over, but he did not manage to get a proper build iirc.

Regards,
Lluís.