[fedora-java] Fedora & JPackage

[Jerry James]

A few months back, I had to start using a web service provided by a
certain commercial content management system.  This particular web
service uses a namespace that is provided only by Apache Axis 1.  At
that time, I discovered that we are two versions behind on this dead
product [1] (Apache Axis 2 is the version under active development).
I started looking into what would be needed to get Apache Axis 2 into
Fedora, and discovered a long list of missing dependencies and a long
list of packages that would need to be upgraded.

More recently, I took over the pmd package, and found that 3 other
packages would need to be upgraded to move pmd to a newer version [2]
[3] [4].

Both events made me wonder how much we are gaining by drawing spec
files from JPackage, and how much we are losing.  I wondered whether
maintainers were not moving forward to newer versions of their
packages because the JPackage versions were not moving forward.  So I
collected a little data on the subject.  This is far from the final
word; more information has to be collected to make any final
determination.  But I thought some of you might find what I have
collected so far interesting.

http://jjames.fedorapeople.org/java.html

Comments welcome.

Relevant bugs:
[1] https://bugzilla.redhat.com/show_bug.cgi?id=231153
[2] https://bugzilla.redhat.com/show_bug.cgi?id=465985
[3] https://bugzilla.redhat.com/show_bug.cgi?id=465987
[4] https://bugzilla.redhat.com/show_bug.cgi?id=465989
-- 
Jerry James
http://loganjerry.googlepages.com/