miro and sun-java6-plugin conflict clarification

, Will Kahn-Greene | share this (mastodon)
Note: This is an old post in a blog with a lot of posts over a long span of time. The world has changed, technologies have changed, and I've changed. It's likely this is out of date, the code doesn't work, the ideas haven't aged well, or the ideas were terrible to begin with. Let me know if you think this is something that needs updating.

I want to clarify the situation with Miro and the sun-java6-plugin package.

Prior to 0.9.9.9, if you had the sun-java6-plugin installed and you install Miro, then Miro would crash on startup. For 0.9.9.9, we added a conflict with the sun-java6-plugin package. That means that in order to install Miro, you will have to uninstall the sun-java6-plugin.

I've gotten a lot of flack for this fix in the last couple of days--and for good reason: this sucks for users who have that plugin installed. I definitely understand the frustration and we don't consider this a final solution. (As a philosophical note, most development solutions are not final--most things can be changed if a better feasible option is found and implemented.)

The bottom line is that if you use the sun-java6-plugin plugin, you can't use Miro. Adding the conflict line to the package makes it more user-friendly when installing Miro because then you're not stuck in a situation where you have installed Miro, it crashes on startup, and you have no clue why.

We're interested in a real solution for this problem. Details of the problem are in these bugs:

If you have feasible ideas, add them in the comments on bug 9064 or comment here.

Want to comment? Send an email to willkg at bluesock dot org. Include the url for the blog entry in your comment so I have some context as to what you're talking about.