JPackage and Fedora

[Paul W. Frields]

On Wed, 2008-08-13 at 16:17 -0400, Bryan Kearney wrote:
> Karsten 'quaid' Wade wrote:
> > Background:  I asked Matt to bring this discussion here, and in the
> > meantime I'm getting a better understanding of the current relationship
> > between JPackage and Fedora.
> > 
> > On Wed, 2008-08-13 at 10:24 -0700, Matthew Dahlman wrote:
> >> Hi all,
> >>
> >> I've got a question about JPackage. Before getting to the question I'll
> >> give a bit of background. JasperServer, like most Java apps running in an
> >> application server, does not directly ship the source for many of our .jar
> >> dependencies; we retrieve them from trusted maven repositories. Anyone
> >> that's interested can track down the source to any of the jar files, but
> >> we don't normally ship it. This may not be in keeping with Fedora's
> >> guidelines.
> > 
> > You are correct, all dependencies must be inside of Fedora.  Which
> > sort-of answers your question below.  Sort of.
> > 
> >> Therefore it would be good if we had a standard way to distribute the
> >> various jars along with their source. That brings us to JPackage (JPP).
> >> According to their site (http://www.jpackage.org/aboutjpp.php):
> >> The JPackage Project has two primary goals:
> >> - To provide a coherent set of Java software packages for Linux,
> >> satisfying all quality requirements of other applications. 
> >> - To establish an efficient and robust policy for Java software packaging
> >> and installation.
> > 
> > In fact, many JPackage packages are used as the ~70% starting point for
> > the package that is submitted to Fedora.
> > 
> >> I also noticed that Fedora includes jpackage-utils by default. This brings
> >> me, finally, to my question. Is JPackage the correct place to direct our
> >> efforts to get all of our jar dependencies included?
> > 
> > At this time, I do not think it is the right direction.  This is because
> > there is not a formal relationship to operate between the two
> > repositories.  I'll keep hammering on that situation.
> > 
> > The end goal for all of us is "yum install foo" pulls in foo and all
> > foo's dependencies.  If those dependencies are in JPackage, that install
> > won't work.  Right now.
> > 
> > One thing we'll do here in this SIG is understand why things are how
> > they are, and see what recommendations/changes we want to rally for in
> > Fedora ... and JPackage.
> > 
> >> I'm hoping for answers somewhere along this continuum:
> >>
> >> "Yes, JPackage is the one and only place for work like this. Fedora
> >> officially supports this project and recommends that all Java apps use
> >> it."
> >> or
> >> "Yes, JPackage is a reasonable place for this work. There are some details
> >> to work out because they do a few things differently from Fedora best
> >> practices. Alternatively you could use X or Y."
> >> or
> >> "No, those JPackage guys will be the death of Java as we know it. Maybe of
> >> death of Linux and of life as we know it as well."
> > 
> > "No, the relationship with JPackage is too much in flux to guarantee
> > that won't be wasted work.  Do the work in Fedora, and if JPackage
> > becomes the standard, it will be easy to port the package over there."
> 
> Karsten, is there an alien type jpp -> rpm converter?

ISTR that this was a no-no from Fedora packaging standards, since that
approach would just be packaging up a .jar/.zip archive file, but Spot
can probably shed more light on that.

-- 
Paul W. Frields
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  http://paul.frields.org/   -  -   http://pfrields.fedorapeople.org/
  irc.freenode.net: stickster @ #fedora-docs, #fedora-devel, #fredlug
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