Starting Java SIG

[Alexander Kurtakov]

> Hi everyone,
> 
> There has been an effort few years back to start Java SIG but it didn't
> work out in the end (no idea why). I decided it's time to try again :-)
> 
> I would like to start Java SIG for a lot of reasons. Some of them:
> 
>  * Packaging guidelines are in need of an update (badly)
>  * Consistency in java packages is somewhat lacking
>  * More eyes see more approach, I'd like for all java related commits to
>    go through an alias so we can all watch out for changes that can
>    break our stuff
>  * Have a place where we can collect tips & tricks, solutions to common
>    problems etc. Currently this information is scattered through
>    people's wiki pages
>  * Java needs collaboration more than most other areas, because problems
>    cannot be safely discovered automatically when someone changes
>    dependency. This can cause serious headaches (to me at least). Java
>    SIG to the rescue! :-)
>  * Other languages have their own SIGs and we don't! :-)
> 
> Who am I?
> Owner/Co-maintainer of a bunch of Java packages (mostly maven plugins,
> apache-commons, junit, velocity, checkstyle, plexus
> libraries). Involved in recent update of maven to v2.2.1.
> 
> Reply if you're interested with helping out and being able to
> see/influence where Java packaging in Fedora is going. I know there will
> be at least a few people joining in.

I'll be more than happy to join such SIG. This SIG should allow us to give 
better entry point for new contributors and also help in coordinating big 
efforts like:
* Jakarta commons rename - ongoing but managed only through the wiki page
* Phasing out junit3 - junit4 provides the same compat API (needs work)
* Tomcat - phase out tomcat5 , package tomcat 7 
* AutoQA - QA guys are struggling with their effort to get their stuff running 
from Fedora packages (shame on us if we can't make our own stuff run from our 
packages)
* Name it :)

I'm pretty sure there are a number of other reasons for such SIG.

Alexander Kurtakov



> 
> I'll be starting Java SIG wiki page soon, plus I guess we can peruse
> java-devel mailing list for SIG discussions.
> 
> 
> --
> Stanislav Ochotnicky <sochotnicky at redhat.com>
> Associate Software Engineer - Base Operating Systems Brno
> 
> PGP: 71A1677C
> Red Hat Inc.                               http://cz.redhat.com