JPackage and Fedora

[Karsten 'quaid' Wade]

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."

How was that?

> Depending on people's thoughts on this I imagine we'll eventually get into
> separate detailed threads on how JPackage works with foo.jar here and/or
> on the JPackage mailing list.

This is just my preliminary analysis.  I'm expecting Tom Callaway, who
leads the Packaging Committee, may have some more insight.

- Karsten
-- 
Karsten Wade, Sr. Developer Community Mgr.
Dev Fu : http://developer.redhatmagazine.com
Fedora : http://quaid.fedorapeople.org
gpg key : AD0E0C41
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