Bug#534564: JDK could be a suggestion rather than a dependency

[Thierry Carrez]

Package: ant
Severity: wishlist
Version: 1.7.0-6
User: ubuntu-devel at lists.ubuntu.com
Usertags: origin-ubuntu karmic

ant currently has:
Depends: java-gcj-compat-dev | java-virtual-machine, java-gcj-compat |
java1-runtime | java2-runtime, libxerces2-java

However, ant doesn't *require* a JDK to run. It is used increasingly in
server packages to run tasks that don't involve compilation, and having
this hard dependency on "java-gcj-compat-dev | java-virtual-machine"
pulls a complete JDK (with related X libraries) in a server install.

The suggestion would be to depend on a headless runtime, and make
default-jdk a "Suggests" instead:

Depends: default-jre-headless | java1-runtime-headless |
java2-runtime-headless, libxerces2-java
Recommends: ant-optional, ant-gcj
Suggests: default-jdk | java-compiler | java-sdk, ant-doc

This is what is currently used in Ubuntu karmic.
Cheers,

-- 
Thierry Carrez