packaging lessons from FUDCon hackfest?

[Karsten Wade]

Andrew Overholt and Tom Fitzsimmons sat with a guy from Alfresco (Lee
Faus) last Friday in the FUDCon hackfests.  Mainly they were doing a
code review with him to see what he has to do to get Alfresco packaged
for Fedora.  It was a great effort, and possibly enlightening for
everyone as to the scope of the problem ahead of us to get Java ISVs
packaged in Fedora.

Andrew, Tom -- where there any insights, lessons, ideas, or other
outfalls from that work with Lee?

Two specific areas of interest are:

* Tips, ideas, or plans for Java packaging ==> target
wiki/Packaging/Java
* ISV-specific lessons, tips, etc. ==> target wiki/SIGs/ISV

I'm asking on this list because I think a brain dump from both of you
here would give good exposure.  I'm ready to glean content to make the
above wiki updates. :)

- Karsten

[Andrew Overholt]

Hi,

* Karsten 'quaid' Wade  [2008-06-25 10:54]:
> Andrew, Tom -- where there any insights, lessons, ideas, or other
> outfalls from that work with Lee?

Well, the process we went through was quite simple, actually:  list the
software they were using (in this case it was find all the JARs), determine
where it came from, and see if it was already packaged.  Moving applications
onto newer version of libraries so that we're only ever shipping one will
always be a challenge for ISVs since they're often using some version that
they imported into their tree at some point in the past.  This is one obvious
difference between ISV packaging and distribution packaging.  If we get more
ISVs actually developing _on_ Fedora and more up-to-date dependencies, we may
be able to help bring everyone's dependencies forward.
> ISV-specific lessons, tips, etc. ==> target wiki/SIGs/ISV

I really wish we had video-taped Tom and Lee talking.  At the beginning of
the conversation Lee was unaware of the benefits of being a part of the
distribution and was wary of relying on dependencies outside of their direct
control; by the end of the conversation, he was fully in agreement of the
benefits of being a part of the distribution :)  Tom:  perhaps you could
write up some of the common arguments by ISVs and the Free Software /
distribution POV for each of them?

Andrew

[Thomas Fitzsimmons]

Andrew Overholt  writes:
> Hi,
> Karsten 'quaid' Wade  [2008-06-25 10:54]:
> > Andrew, Tom -- where there any insights, lessons, ideas, or other
> > outfalls from that work with Lee?
>
> Well, the process we went through was quite simple, actually:  list the
> software they were using (in this case it was find all the JARs), determine
> where it came from, and see if it was already packaged.  Moving applications
> onto newer version of libraries so that we're only ever shipping one will
> always be a challenge for ISVs since they're often using some version that
> they imported into their tree at some point in the past.  This is one obvious
> difference between ISV packaging and distribution packaging.  If we get more
> ISVs actually developing _on_ Fedora and more up-to-date dependencies, we may
> be able to help bring everyone's dependencies forward.
> > ISV-specific lessons, tips, etc. ==> target wiki/SIGs/ISV
>
> I really wish we had video-taped Tom and Lee talking.  At the beginning of
> the conversation Lee was unaware of the benefits of being a part of the
> distribution and was wary of relying on dependencies outside of their direct
> control; by the end of the conversation, he was fully in agreement of the
> benefits of being a part of the distribution :)  Tom:  perhaps you could
> write up some of the common arguments by ISVs and the Free Software /
> distribution POV for each of them?

Here's a draft document:

https://fedoraproject.org/wiki/FedoraForISVs

I linked to it from the ISV SIG page:

https://fedoraproject.org/wiki/SIGs/ISV#Resources_for_ISVs

Tom

[Bryan Kearney]

Thomas Fitzsimmons wrote:
> Andrew Overholt  writes:
> Here's a draft document:
>
> https://fedoraproject.org/wiki/FedoraForISVs

You could also list download counting/tracking as a "loss". If an ISV 
provides a tar-based distribution from their website, they can track 
counts and/or emails. This may be important for their marketing department.

One other item, and perhaps this is covered some place else, but are 
there accepted standards for aggregate packages (e.g. war, ear, rar) 
files? For Java, this seems like more then just "Unity with Windows 
release process"

-- bk

[Andrew Overholt]

* Bryan Kearney  [2008-07-07 08:06]:
> One other item, and perhaps this is covered some place else, but are  
> there accepted standards for aggregate packages (e.g. war, ear, rar)  
> files? For Java, this seems like more then just "Unity with Windows  
> release process"

Last I heard a few people were working on guidelines for web apps
including J2EE, etc. apps.  Check through PackagingDrafts/ on the wiki.

Andrew

[Thomas Fitzsimmons]

Bryan Kearney  writes:
> Thomas Fitzsimmons wrote:
> > Andrew Overholt  writes:
> > Here's a draft document:
> >
> > https://fedoraproject.org/wiki/FedoraForISVs
>
> You could also list download counting/tracking as a "loss". If an ISV
> provides a tar-based distribution from their website, they can track
> counts and/or emails. This may be important for their marketing
> department.

Good point.  Wiki updated.
> One other item, and perhaps this is covered some place else, but are
> there accepted standards for aggregate packages (e.g. war, ear, rar)
> files? For Java, this seems like more then just "Unity with Windows
> release process"

https://fedoraproject.org/wiki/PackagingDrafts/JavaWebApps

Tom

[Benjamin Reed]

Andrew Overholt wrote:
> difference between ISV packaging and distribution packaging.  If we get more
> ISVs actually developing _on_ Fedora and more up-to-date dependencies, we may
> be able to help bring everyone's dependencies forward.

I wasn't at FUDCon, so I don't know if any of this was discussed, but...

The biggest issue with that, I think, is that anyone using Maven is 
already completely outside of the normal "ask the distro for a 
dependency" way of doing things; doing maven-based development on fedora 
will still always end up using maven for resolving dependencies.  :(

Not to mention when you get into all of the OSGI stuff where foo uses 
bar 1.x and baz uses incompatible-bar 2.9.x and it does classloading to 
allow them to be available simultaneously.

At some level it seems like some kind of fundamental tools need to be 
designed to tell maven to prefer system versions over specific 
versioned-dependencies, run unit tests against them, etc., but that's a 
huge amount of work.

[Andrew Overholt]

* Benjamin Reed  [2008-07-04 15:30]:
> The biggest issue with that, I think, is that anyone using Maven is  
> already completely outside of the normal "ask the distro for a  
> dependency" way of doing things; doing maven-based development on fedora  
> will still always end up using maven for resolving dependencies.  :(

Deepak Bhole has done some great work on the maven package in Fedora
which one can use to build _only_ from other stuff in the distro and
never touch the maven repos.
> Not to mention when you get into all of the OSGI stuff where foo uses  
> bar 1.x and baz uses incompatible-bar 2.9.x and it does classloading to  
> allow them to be available simultaneously.

It's the same root issue, though:  either people move to new versions --
the one we ship -- or they maintain compat- packages.  The former is
obviously preferred :)

Andrew