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Use BinaryBuilder to install java?? #136
Description
Should we try to use BinaryBuilder to install a private version of Java within the Julia depot?
- Is this a good idea? It's not a terrible idea, many applications do bundle Java. Also, I'm told
condainstalls it's own Java. But is it a good idea? - If we do this, we should probably find a way to re-package the AdoptOpenJDK binaries. Compiling OpenJDK from scratch is certainly not a good idea.
- If we do this, we should probably use the system installed JVM if the JAVA_HOME environment variable is set.
The main advantage is that the user does not need to install java themselves. This is particularly valuable for users of Julia libraries with Java dependencies. So if you want to use Taro.jl, you don't need to worry about getting a JVM on your machine if you don't already have one.
Activity
mkitti commentedon Mar 2, 2021
What are the licensing implications of this?
OpenJDK is GPLv2 with linking exception (classpath exception)
aviks commentedon Mar 2, 2021
This package is MIT licensed, so it's fine to depend on GPLv2 packages. Most people now use OpenJDK (via AdoptOpenJDK) i imagine.
mkitti commentedon Mar 2, 2021
Yes, but by distributing GPLv2, we will then entering others into a GPLv2 license, and may also draw questions about the licensing of this package, so I think this has be done carefully.
In particular, JavaCall should not depend on a OpenJDK JLL. It should be able to use it is it happens to be installed though.
mkitti commentedon Mar 2, 2021
https://github.com/JuliaMath/FFTW.jl provides some precedent for this, although is some reluctance to distributing the runtimes of other lanugages.
https://julialang.slack.com/archives/C674ELDNX/p1614712811136600
ViralBShah commentedon Nov 4, 2025
I suggest this is not really worth doing. People who use JavaCall surely don't want their Java coming from BB.
mkitti commentedon Nov 4, 2025
One possibility is to use CondaPkg.jl to install openjdk:
https://anaconda.org/conda-forge/openjdk
We could set this up as a package extension to an OpenJDK.jl wrapper.