Re: What's the State of the Java SIG?
by Mat Booth
On Mon, 18 Nov 2019 at 11:17, John M. Harris Jr <johnmh(a)splentity.com>
wrote:
> I must disagree. That it "works" in RHEL doesn't mean that it should be
done
> in Fedora. The current situation in Fedora, where maven and ant have been
> "moved" to modules has screwed over the Eclipse packagers, for example,
and
> more are to follow.
>
I'm flattered that you think there is more than one Eclipse packager these
days, but it is not my perception that choices made by the maven and ant
maintainer has screwed over Eclipse.
From my PoV the problem is that Ursa Prime née Major has been coming Real
Soon Now™ for years to obviate the build issues but it just never
materialised. This is why the Eclipse stack has gotten into a bit of a
pickle -- I waited far too long with far too much naive optimism before
modularising and I'm sad to say that not modularising Eclipse sooner has
done a great disservice to users.
TBH as a desktop application, I see a brighter future in Flatpak for
Eclipse and maybe when our Flatpak distribution is mature enough, we can
eventually stop shipping RPMs altogether....
3 years, 10 months
Re: What's the State of the Java SIG?
by Fabio Valentini
On Tue, Nov 19, 2019 at 5:12 PM Aleksandra Fedorova <alpha(a)bookwar.info> wrote:
>
> Hi, Fabio,
>
> On Mon, Nov 18, 2019 at 10:30 AM Fabio Valentini <decathorpe(a)gmail.com> wrote:
>>
>> Hi everybody,
>>
>> You're probably aware that the Stewardship SIG has been picking up
>> some (±230) Java packages to keep them from getting removed from
>> fedora, and to try to keep them maintained. Since the fraction of
>> out-of-date packages has fallen from 70% to 30% (with 0 FTBFS issues
>> left), I think we've done a pretty good job so far.
>
Hi Aleksandra!
> I'd like to make it clear first that the work of Stewardship SIG is highly appreciated. Thank you for doing it.
Thank you. That's good to hear.
>>
>> But, you might ask, wouldn't the Java SIG be well suited to that task?
>> I'm asking myself the same thing, but I feel like I've been shouting
>> into the void for months - according to the Wiki page for the SIG [0],
>> the Java SIG has 26 listed members, of which I only recognise 4-5 as
>> packagers who are still actively contributing to fedora. For a few
>> others, I've already gone through the Non-responsive Maintainer
>> process.
>>
>> Both the page for the Java SIG [0] and Java in fedora [1] look like
>> they haven't been updated in years - they even list some things as
>> "wishlisted" or "in progress" which were packaged for fedora a while
>> ago, but have since been retired again, either due to getting
>> orphaned, or due to FTBFS issues — most of which were being caused by
>> a lack of maintenance since circa 2017, which is when most Java
>> packagers seem to have fallen into a black hole, as far as I can tell
>> (getting information by deciphering Hawking Radiation is hard, you
>> know).
>>
>> So, I'm wondering - what's *actually* the state of the Java SIG? The
>> IRC channel is silent, the Mailing list is dead except 0-2 posts *PER
>> MONTH* (mostly from non-SIG members), and the Wiki pages are wildly
>> out of date.
>>
>> Can we at least get the two Wiki pages get updated to the current state?
>> Does the Java ecosystem on fedora need more involvement from the community?
>> Or is it time for a "tabula rasa" and restart the SIG?
>>
>> I really hope we can get something off the ground, soon - because I
>> and other members of the Stewardship SIG have been spending a lot of
>> hours each week on keeping this stuff working, but my patience and
>> energy are reaching their limits. I'd really like to slowly start
>> handing over Java packages to someone who's actually using them, and
>> is interested in keeping them maintained.
>
>
> I agree with your point that Stewardship SIG supposed to be only a temporary owner of certain packages. The goal of the SIG is to step in if there is a critical unresolved issue in the current state, and then route the issue to the right owner.
>
> > So, if you're an active member of the Java SIG, or a (proven)packager
> > interested in Java packaging on fedora, please speak up - maybe we can
> > get this ball rolling :)
>
> But I'd like to reset the conversation here.
>
> The point of Java SIG and I think the nature of your request to it is not to take the responsibility of packages Stewardship SIG inherited.
>
> Rather we have a generic problem: how one can package and maintain Java stack and Java application in Fedora. Java SIG supposed to be the owner of this topic. It needs to provide the common place for Java developers (app maintainers as well as toolchain maintainers) to communicate to each other and come up with solutions to the common issues.
>
> The way how exactly the issue should be resolved (with or without modules, with or without buildroot packages and so on) is for the Java SIG members to figure out.
>
> Thus, I would suggest to frame the request differently. Instead of asking who can maintain certain non-modular Java packages, let's ask who can describe the path forward for Java-related packages in Fedora, and who is willing to work on it.
>
> I see that Mikolaj has a vision how it supposed to work. And I think he spent quite some time designing the workflow which would fit this vision, thus it is worth to listen to it with an open mind.
>
> @Mikolaj, can you document the setup for java toolchain somewhere other than a mailing list? Buildroot modules, defaults streams, what Java packager should and shouldn't use... Probably one of those outdated wiki pages can be updated for that.
(snip)
> This will create a starting point for this conversation and set the context, so that app maintainers can work constructively with it rather than fall into yet another generic modularity conversation.
I agree, this seems like a productive way forward. It's also the
reason why I didn't want to prominently mention Modularity in the
original message, and instead tried to focus on the issue at hand -
the future of Java packaging in fedora. There also seems to be
conflicting information floating around concerning the Java modules
(maven, ant, javapackages-tools, ... what else is there?) - what are
they for, are they available at "runtime" or only as a "build-only"
dependency, and so on.
The current situation leads to a lot of duplicated effort (both in
non-modular and modular branches), instead of making packaging easier
and more approachable. Alex's comment that they'd have to bundle a lot
of Java dependencies in a theoretical dogtag-pki module, since they're
only available at build-time, not at run-time, doesn't make it seem
like the current situation is designed to eliminate duplication of
work either - rather the opposite.
Fabio
>> PS, side note about Modularity: If I understand the current state of
>> things correctly, the plan is to make the "maven:3.5" and "ant:1.10"
>> modular packages be installable alongside non-modular Java packages.
>> They're currently shadowing non-modular packages (since they have
>> default streams), but I understand this is getting fixed. This means
>> that the non-modular Java packages (especially maven, ant, xmvn, their
>> dependencies, and other packages which are used for building Java RPM
>> packages in fedora) will need to be maintained as non-modular packages
>> indefinitely.
>
>
> --
> Aleksandra Fedorova
> bookwar
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3 years, 10 months
What's the State of the Java SIG?
by Fabio Valentini
Hi everybody,
You're probably aware that the Stewardship SIG has been picking up
some (±230) Java packages to keep them from getting removed from
fedora, and to try to keep them maintained. Since the fraction of
out-of-date packages has fallen from 70% to 30% (with 0 FTBFS issues
left), I think we've done a pretty good job so far.
But, you might ask, wouldn't the Java SIG be well suited to that task?
I'm asking myself the same thing, but I feel like I've been shouting
into the void for months - according to the Wiki page for the SIG [0],
the Java SIG has 26 listed members, of which I only recognise 4-5 as
packagers who are still actively contributing to fedora. For a few
others, I've already gone through the Non-responsive Maintainer
process.
Both the page for the Java SIG [0] and Java in fedora [1] look like
they haven't been updated in years - they even list some things as
"wishlisted" or "in progress" which were packaged for fedora a while
ago, but have since been retired again, either due to getting
orphaned, or due to FTBFS issues — most of which were being caused by
a lack of maintenance since circa 2017, which is when most Java
packagers seem to have fallen into a black hole, as far as I can tell
(getting information by deciphering Hawking Radiation is hard, you
know).
So, I'm wondering - what's *actually* the state of the Java SIG? The
IRC channel is silent, the Mailing list is dead except 0-2 posts *PER
MONTH* (mostly from non-SIG members), and the Wiki pages are wildly
out of date.
Can we at least get the two Wiki pages get updated to the current state?
Does the Java ecosystem on fedora need more involvement from the community?
Or is it time for a "tabula rasa" and restart the SIG?
I really hope we can get something off the ground, soon - because I
and other members of the Stewardship SIG have been spending a lot of
hours each week on keeping this stuff working, but my patience and
energy are reaching their limits. I'd really like to slowly start
handing over Java packages to someone who's actually using them, and
is interested in keeping them maintained.
So, if you're an active member of the Java SIG, or a (proven)packager
interested in Java packaging on fedora, please speak up - maybe we can
get this ball rolling :)
PS, side note about Modularity: If I understand the current state of
things correctly, the plan is to make the "maven:3.5" and "ant:1.10"
modular packages be installable alongside non-modular Java packages.
They're currently shadowing non-modular packages (since they have
default streams), but I understand this is getting fixed. This means
that the non-modular Java packages (especially maven, ant, xmvn, their
dependencies, and other packages which are used for building Java RPM
packages in fedora) will need to be maintained as non-modular packages
indefinitely.
(
also posted on discussion.fedoraproject.org:
https://discussion.fedoraproject.org/t/whats-the-state-of-the-java-sig/11714
)
Thanks,
Fabio (decathorpe)
[0]: https://fedoraproject.org/wiki/SIGs/Java
[1]: https://fedoraproject.org/wiki/Java
3 years, 10 months