Java EE (Java Enterprise Edition) General Discussion

When developers of "package" based linux systems what to provide support for a specific technology the developer must first identify many dependencies.

If, for example, a developer decided to write a package installer for JSTL he must first determine where to find it's dependencies.

The dependencies to build JSTL from source include a couple of jar files included in J2EE 1.4 which become difficult to retrieve due to the fact that they are "bundled" with other technologies that may or may not be desired by the user.

One of the beauties of Linux is the ability to choose what you want or don't want on a system. Currently, SUN is not providing for separate downloads.

The fact that SUN bundles these technologies together makes the life of the package developer very difficult. In order to create a package installer for JSTL, a large download is required to install the needed JARs. This download includes the Sun Java System Application Server Platform Edition 8 which could not be needed by the user.

Linux users were given a nice tar file download of the j2ee 1.3 package in the form of j2sdkee-1_3_1-linux.tar.gz.

Is there any possiblity of SUN reconsidering their decision not to do this with 1.4, and making life for developers a little bit easier?