What is gij (GNU libgcj) java?

Question

Today I checked update-alternatives --config java and got a weird output:

There are 2 choices for the alternative java (providing /usr/bin/java).

  Selection    Path                                     Priority   Status
------------------------------------------------------------
* 0            /usr/bin/gij-4.8                          1048      auto mode
  1            /usr/bin/gij-4.8                          1048      manual mode
  2            /usr/lib/jvm/java-8-oracle/jre/bin/java   3         manual mode

I've never seen this /usr/bin/gij-4.8 before. What is that? Has it been installed by some package? How to find out which?

pilot6@Pilot6:~$ java -version
java version "1.5.0"
gij (GNU libgcj) version 4.8.4

Copyright (C) 2007 Free Software Foundation, Inc.
This is free software; see the source for copying conditions.  There is NO
warranty; not even for MERCHANTABILITY or FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE.

The strange thing is that I use Java only on Firefox for banking and it runs well. It shows that I have the latest Oracle java installed.

Is that a malware?

Answer 1

What is that? Has it been installed by some package? How to find out which?

gij is a Java bytecode interpreter included with libgcj package. libgcj is the runtime that goes along with the gcj front end to GCC and includes parts of the Java Class Libraries, plus glue to connect the libraries to the compiler and the underlying OS. So, not a malware definitely.

References:

The libgcj home page

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