Revisiting FreeBSD & Java

Introduction

Some time ago, I attempted to use FreeBSD to do a small amount of development work. I documented the frustration I encountered.

It turns out that I think I was wrong!

Wrong?!

It seems that the usual way to get packages on FreeBSD is to use the ports collection. However, this is not the only way to get packages

FreeBSD, like its rivals, OpenBSD, NetBSD and DragonflyBSD (And many proprietary Unix systems) has a tool for adding packages -- binary packages. This was found out after some time of hanging around in the OpenBSD IRC channel, and setting up an extremely locked-down Minecraft Server. That's another blog post!

Get it Right

Simply put:

#> pkg_add -r jre

Will get you a Java Runtime environment (OpenJDK 1.6.0_32). If you need the JDK, simply call:

#> pkg_add -r jdk

Instead. Job done. No faffing about trying to compile ports, no agreeing to Oracle's draconian licensing, just pure Java.

Bonus Section

We all love build systems! Automate everything, right? Well, it turns out that Maven3 is available under FreeBSD (But not Debian 6.0, my work machine). It's a similarly difficult task for getting Maven3 installed:

#> pkg_add -r maven3

And that's it. 

It's also similarly easy to get Java running on OpenBSD, just see the pkg_add man page for OpenBSD and set your PKG_PATH to your favourite mirror.