On Sat, Jan 31, 2015 at 12:25 PM, Denice <[log in to unmask]> wrote:
> On Sat, 31 Jan 2015, Taylor Braun-Jones wrote:
>
>> On Fri, Jan 30, 2015 at 2:55 PM, hansel <[log in to unmask]> wrote:
>>       Appreciate the feedback. However, my searching (14 registered
>>       repositories, RHEL and SL documents, RHEL/SL 6 releases of java
>>       1.8 and security updates) finds no SL 7 supported rpm for java
>>       1.8.

This is basically a licensing problem. Oracle does not publish RHEL
specific releases of their "jdk" or "jre" RPM packages, and without
the source, it's difficult to publish a distribution specific
packages. Use the non-specific RPM if you need to go there.

Also note: whoever wrote this stuff for Sun in the first place called
the non-developer package "jre" and the developer package with the
"javac" compiler "jdk", intead of splitting as "java-[majorversion]"
and "java-[majorversion-devel" like a sane person would. Most Linux
Java developers don't bother with the "jre" package, they just get the
"jdk". But if you're strapped for system resources and don't want a
compiler lying around, the "jre" is potentially much safer mucah as
openjdk is safer without the "java-[majorversion]-openjdk-devel"
package.

>> I just downloaded the jdk-8u31-linux-x64.rpm package from the Oracle
>> website:
>>
>>
>> http://www.oracle.com/technetwork/java/javase/downloads/jdk8-downloads-2133
>> 151.html
>
>
> An instructive exercise is to compare the number of lines in the
> post-install portion of an RPM from old UNIX companies (like Sun or
> Oracle):
>
> $ rpm -qp jdk-8u31-linux-x64.rpm --scripts |wc -l
> 2704
>
> and compare that to RPM scriptlets from folk with strong Linux roots,
> like the RPM that Jaroslaw Polok was talking about ..
>
> $ for i in  java-1.8.0-oracle-* ; do echo -n "$i: " ; rpm -qp $i --scripts
> 2>/dev/null |wc -l; done
> java-1.8.0-oracle-1.8.0.25-3.0.el6.x86_64.rpm: 6
> java-1.8.0-oracle-devel-1.8.0.25-3.0.el6.x86_64.rpm: 92
> java-1.8.0-oracle-headless-1.8.0.25-3.0.el6.x86_64.rpm: 61
> java-1.8.0-oracle-javafx-1.8.0.25-3.0.el6.x86_64.rpm: 0
> java-1.8.0-oracle-plugin-1.8.0.25-3.0.el6.x86_64.rpm: 38
> java-1.8.0-oracle-src-1.8.0.25-3.0.el6.x86_64.rpm: 0
>
> You will get some idea why some of us avoid the Oracle-provided package
> like the plague.
>
> cheers, etc.

It's also fascinating scripting. A "%post" operation that does
"compare_java_by_weight" to decide wheter and where to put things is
clearly trying to outsmart the rest of the installation environment.