[Fedora-packaging] [fedora-java] Shipping of binaries in jar files

[Orion Poplawski]

On 04/26/2013 03:39 AM, Stanislav Ochotnicky wrote:
> Quoting Andrew Haley (2013-04-26 11:11:41)
>> On 04/22/2013 11:01 PM, Orion Poplawski wrote:
>>> The eclipse PTP project that I package is starting to ship an executable in
>>> one of its plugins.  The executable is packed into a jar file.  This prevents
>>> debuginfo creation for the executable.
>>>
>>> I started taking a look at how this might be handled elsewhere and found:
>>>
>>> /usr/lib64/eclipse/dropins/cdt/eclipse/plugins/org.eclipse.cdt.core.linux.x86_64_5.2.0.201302132326.jar:
>>>      13327  Defl:X     3624  73% 02-13-2013 23:21 326488c7
>>> os/linux/x86_64/libpty.so
>>>      23720  Defl:X     7151  70% 02-13-2013 23:21 c26c2c94
>>> os/linux/x86_64/libspawner.so
>>>
>>> but no debuginfo package.
>>>
>>> Thoughts, comments?
>>
>> This is pretty obviously a breach of packaging guidelines.  We shouldn't
>> be hiding DSOs in archives.
>
> Hmm, I am not aware of any guideline touching this topic (perhaps because it's
> not that common). But from practical perspective these jars are extremely
> practical because they don't have to deal with JNI file locations and similar
> things which ten to be quite variable.
>
> I don't consider this approach hiding, but we could surely improve the tooling
> support for it.
>
> WRT original question, I am not sure how to proceed. Even if you generate
> debuginfo packages I have to wonder how easy will it be to use in a debugger?
>

The workaround that I am employing for the moment in PTP is to install a 
copy of the binary in %{_libdir}/ptp so that rpm can find it an generate 
debuginfo.  As for how useful that might be, I don't know.  I *think* 
gdb matches things up via hashes these days so it might work, and might 
for the cdt shared libraries as well.

Whatever the solution, I think we need to improve our tooling to check 
inside of archives for binaries.  I'm CC'ing the packaging list as well.

-- 
Orion Poplawski
Technical Manager                     303-415-9701 x222
NWRA/CoRA Division                    FAX: 303-415-9702
3380 Mitchell Lane                  orion at cora.nwra.com
Boulder, CO 80301              http://www.cora.nwra.com