A previous post, How to get OpenJDK 6 for Red Hat Enterprise Linux 5, covered how to install OpenJDK for Fedora Extra Packages for Enterprise Linux (EPEL) 5. Now these instructions are at an even easier URL to remember:
http://openjdk.java.net/install/#fedora
These instructions cover installing OpenJDK 6 for Fedora 9 and EPEL 5, as well as IcedTea 7 for Fedora 8. IcedTea 7 provides the OpenJDK 7 development branch with IcedTea components to make it build under Fedora using entirely open source components. The package name remains the same in the repository, despite the trademark agreement allowing the OpenJDK mark to be used by Fedora, because it is considered too disruptive to rename it now.
Dev Fu focuses on the fresh and free OpenJDK 6 in Fedora 9 (Sulphur) because this is great news for developers. Especially developers who want to use the best software because it’s free and it doesn’t suck. However, there is much more of interest for developers than just OpenJDK:
For a good general overview of Fedora 9, read Fedora Project Leader Paul W. Frields article in Red Hat Magazine, “Fedora 9: Get yours and get involved“. The full feature list for Fedora 9 is also a good read.
The first morning of JavaOne was a great serendipitous event. How often does something fall into place like this: I saw Barton George, who looks after Sun’s relationships with Linux communities, and we decided to cook up a podcast about OpenJDK 6 in Fedora 9. As we walked to the recording room, I commented that it would be great if we could get Tom Fitzsimmons, too. Not two beats later, we rounded a corner, and there stood Tom with Patrick Macdonald. Of course they were available and happy to record with us, and away we went.
Hear Barton (and a little bit of me) interview Tom and Patrick about the journey of OpenJDK and IcedTea: OGG and MP3
Patrick Macdonald, Tom Fitzsimmons (kneeling), and Karsten Wade. Photo: Barton George from this post The discussion covered the history of making a 100% free and open source runtime in Fedora from the initial Java open source code, which itself was 96% of a complete and self-building JDK. This remaining 4% was filled with components from GNU Classpath by the IcedTea team. The term “IcedTea” came from the package name used because, at that time, Fedora didn’t have a trademark license to use “OpenJDK”. Of the GNU Classpath code used, some if it ended up completing the circle to be included in OpenJDK. Based on relationships made at FOSDEM 2007, the team from Fedora/Red Hat were able to work with folks from Sun and other places to do work in the community in advance of resolving the remaining 4%, and do it in a way that could be more easily folded into OpenJDK. What is riveting about this story is the speed and quality of the outcome that is clearly due to the open source methodology used. By opening all the code that they could, Sun made it possible for others to fill the gaps Sun could not immediately fill. By working closely throughout that process, all of the open source code was used and tested in the community. Sun had time to choose the right license so the code could be merged. If Sun had waited until they could open all the code, we would have lost an entire year of development (at least.) Now that OpenJDK 6 is available in EPEL 5 for Red Hat Enterprise Linux 5, it is only a matter of time before it gets certified to appear in an update. This is being worked on by Keith Seitz and Mark Wielaard, who have “not many” test suites to complete to be ready to pass the TCK. Once that is done, the implementation can be called “Java compliant”, which is an important step to being ready for an Enterprise Linux 5.x update. Listen to the audio to get all the details, and check out Barton’s blog entry for his viewpoint.
At the JBoss booth at JavaOne 2008, I spoke with RichFaces developer Alexander Smirnov (OGG, MP3.) Alexander is the founder of the Ajax4jsf project, which he started as a personal side effort. It grew out of his interest in JSF and was originally run as a stand alone, self-hosted project.
As he developed Ajax4jsf, Alexander began working with the MyFaces community, and started communicating more with the larger JSF community. He moved the project to SourceForge at the suggestion of RichFaces lead developer Sergey Smirnov (no relation.) Exadel began developing the RichFaces JSF components library and Alexander joined the project as a framework background developer.
At the time it moved to java.net, Ajax4jsf had grown more useful when integrated with the RichFaces component library. RichFaces, however, was still not open source. The combined projects came to the attention of JBoss, which contracted with Exadel to open source both projects as JBoss projects. These were recently combined into a single project under the RichFaces name, available through JBoss.org. (RichFaces is combined with the JBoss Tools Eclipse-based developer environment to make up the JBoss Developer Studio subscription offering.)
Current activity for the RichFaces project includes a focus on building RichFaces functionality within JBoss Portlet Bridge. JBoss Portlet Bridge implements JSR-301 to provide support for not only JSF running in a portal, but also Seam and RichFaces.
Joining forces with JBoss has brought significantly more usage, ten times or more in terms of downloads. In particular, Alexander says there is an obvious increase in forum questions and discussions. In terms of attracting contributors, there are currently very few code contributions from the community outside of Exadel and JBoss. Alexander and Sergey describe the development process for the RichFaces team as being structured with a well-oiled process, which creates a higher barrier of entry for people outside of the team. As early ways to bring in external contributors, there are current needs for testing, defining future requirements, and requesting features and enhancements.
For the future roadmap of RichFaces, Alexander says that the next step is toward semantic web technologies.
This afternoon I caught a few minutes with Ivelin Ivanov, a lead developer on the Mobicents project. Mobicents is the first certified open source platform for developing and deploying JSLEE applications.
This audiocast is available from the JBoss.org podcast channel, in OGG and MP3 formats.
What’s funny is, the instructions are shorter than the title of this post.
su -c "rpm -Uvh http://download.fedora.redhat.com/pub/epel/5/i386/epel-release-5-2.noarch.rpm"
su -c "yum install java-1.6.0-openjdk"
Read more about how to use EPEL. Fedora EPEL is a community run project to bring Fedora packages to Enterprise Linux users when the package is not included by Red Hat in an Enterprise Linux release. Read more on the Fedora EPEL wiki pages, including links to package view (i386, x86_64, ppc) per EPEL version (4, 5 to correspond with Enterprise Linux versions.)
Upon arriving I was immediately struck by how large and professional this open community conference is. CommunityOne seems indicative of what Sun’s developer audience might expect. A nice balance of spoon fed and gourmet buffet. Aside from doing final polish on my Fedora community presentation, I went to Benjamin Mako Hill’s talk on free culture and freedomdefined.org.
Currently I’m sitting in Jono Bacon’s talk on Ubuntu, and it’s amazing the thematic matches. People who really get community, the value of working with upstream, and treating community in the right ways. I think that, aside from logos, I could take Jono’s talk and give it about Fedora. Well, all except the Chuck Norris images.
