upgrade to breezy silently ovetwrote java entries in /etc/alternatives

[Shai Berger]

I upgraded from Hoary to Breezy using aptitude dist-upgrade. Before that, I had
installed Sun's j2sdk 1.5 from the multiverse, and eclipse by unzipping the
upstream tarball.

After the upgrade, I noticed that word-completion in eclipse failed to work.
When I looked into it, I found that eclipse was now running on GIJ instead of
the Sun JRE, because the java entry in /etc/alternatives was now pointing to GIJ.

Other entries changed this way were the entry for jar and the entries for java
and jar's manuals.

I recall no questions asked about this at all during the upgrade.

I was very happy to find eclipse is in the universe now, though. Keep up the
good work!

Thanks,
Shai.

[Dennis Kaarsemaker (dennis)]

Use the command 'sudo update-alternatives --config java' to correct that (same
for javac, jar, etc...)

[Shai Berger (shai-platonix)]

I already fixed it manually, thanks. It's still a problem with the upgrade process.

[Matthias Klose (doko)]

(In reply to comment #0)
> I upgraded from Hoary to Breezy using aptitude dist-upgrade. Before that, I had
> installed Sun's j2sdk 1.5 from the multiverse, and eclipse by unzipping the
> upstream tarball.
>
> After the upgrade, I noticed that word-completion in eclipse failed to work.
> When I looked into it, I found that eclipse was now running on GIJ instead of
> the Sun JRE, because the java entry in /etc/alternatives was now pointing to GIJ.
>
> Other entries changed this way were the entry for jar and the entries for java
> and jar's manuals.
>
> I recall no questions asked about this at all during the upgrade.

not a bug.

  update-alternatives --display java

should display the alternatives used. the free java alternatives do have a
higher priority than the non-free ones.

[Shai Berger (shai-platonix)]

(In reply to comment #3)
>
> not a bug.
>
> update-alternatives --display java
>
> should display the alternatives used. the free java alternatives do have a
> higher priority than the non-free ones.

is too a bug -- perhaps in the priorities.

It makes no sense for a 1.4 JDK to have a higher priority than a 1.5 one, even
if the 1.4 is free and the 1.5 isn't.

At the very least, the user should be asked.

[Matthias Klose (doko)]

(In reply to comment #4)
> (In reply to comment #3)
> >
> > not a bug.
> >
> > update-alternatives --display java
> >
> > should display the alternatives used. the free java alternatives do have a
> > higher priority than the non-free ones.
>
> is too a bug -- perhaps in the priorities.

the selection of priorities is not a bug.

> It makes no sense for a 1.4 JDK to have a higher priority than a 1.5 one, even
> if the 1.4 is free and the 1.5 isn't.

if you think, it is, then you are free to select a priority when building your
package.

> At the very least, the user should be asked.

the alternatives are not changed once they are set to manual mode.

again, this is not a bug.

[Shai Berger (shai-platonix)]

As I said, I did not make my own package, but installed Java from the multiverse.

Your reply amounts to "breakage by default (at least with respect to this
package) is ok".

I understand that there is no commitment to supporting multiverse packages, and
yet, I wanted to alert you to the situation. Arguably, this is a bug with the
multiverse package -- it should set the alternative to manual or have a higher
priority, as long as the universe packages only support an older Java spec. I
don't know. All I really know is that upgrading broke stuff for me.

My personal problem has already been solved; beyond that, it's your product.