Scala updates and a call for participation

[Will Benton]

Friends,

The Scala package has been broken in Fedora for F19 and up for some time, which is a bummer since some cool projects like Spark depend on it.  Some of you know that I've been working on getting Scala working in Fedora again lately.  My efforts are up on the web at

   https://github.com/willb/scala-packaging
   http://freevariable.com/scala/scala-2.10.2-1.fc19.src.rpm

What I have is a build of Scala 2.10 (not ideal for Spark, but necessary for Java 7) that builds on f19 and rawhide locally and in Koji (see the git tag V2.10.2-1).  This build has a couple of limitations:

   1.  it doesn't build the scala-partest jar (due to a couple of missing dependencies),
   2.  it doesn't run the test suite as part of the build (due to many more missing dependencies), although the spec patches the test suite to eliminate spurious failures when it is possible to run it as part of a build,
   3.  it relies on bootstrap binaries in the first release (as per Fedora policy); it isn't clear to me whether or not it is currently possible to bootstrap Scala without Scala

Here's how you can help:

   1.  The current Scala maintainers have been unresponsive for some time (see threads on fedora-devel).  If you're a provenpackager, you can commit the new package and get Scala available in Fedora again.
   2.  If you're a Scala user, you can try the new package and let me know if it works for you.
   3.  If you're experienced with Java packaging, you can package (or review) missing dependencies for the Scala test suite.
   4.  If you're interested in getting involved with packaging other Scala ecosystem projects (like sbt and Akka), there will be a chance to do that as well.
   5.  If you're interested in improving the quality of my Scala package and can provide actionable feedback, please do so.


thanks,
wb