Comment 15 for bug 1368094

I've currently got backports from Vivid to Trusty of:

 openjdk-8 8u45-b14-1
 openjfx 8u40-b25-1

 in a PPA for testing.

https://launchpad.net/~tj/+archive/ubuntu/java-for-14.04/

I'm going to be doing thorough testing of them via several demanding Java projects over the coming week or so.

In order to successfully build openjfx several other packages, required only for building, had to be backported too (libasm4-java, spock, werken.xpath [bug #1455275 in library symlink).

All of the backports needed tweaks to either their build-depends or their debian/rules to force explicit use of the Java-8 JRE/JDK.

I'd like some feedback on whether those build-depends backports would be accepted into Trusty in order to enable the backport of OpenJFX, which has become a core part of Java-8 providing long-demanded media handling support.

Having Java-8 in the repository without OpenJFX for the LTS would, I foresee, invite demands and bug reports for missing major functionality.

Package Section Changes
libasm4-java java Support for ASM5
spock universe/misc Required by gradle; needed to build against Java-8
werken.xpath universe/misc Required by gradle; bug-fix of bad symlink /usr/share/java/werken.xpath-java

The problem is that these packages need to build against Java-8 in order to be useful but that might cause regressions in the building of other packages that build-depend on them but are targeted at Trusty's Java-6 or Java-7. I intend to work through their reverse-depends lists to determine if there are any problems but that will take some time.