Debianizing the Java world?
I started a thread[1] on maven-user yesterday to try and understand
whether Maven's convenience with binary artifacts extrapolates to
convenience working with source
One of the first answers even suggested I should go and see the Debian
folks (the FTP master's reputation for keeping binary stuff out is known
far and wide)
I think this is a gap in what Maven currently offers, but Maven's
modular nature also makes it very easy to fill that gap, and it would be
interesting to try and do it the Debian way.
I just want to understand if I might be duplicating any existing efforts
though.
Specifically, I was thinking that some kind of Maven plugin could be
developed to scan the dependency graphs of projects and, where possible,
extract the SCM details from pom.xml manifests and then recursively (a)
clone their repositories, (b) branch each repo and remove binary
artifacts (junit.jar is a common example) and then (c) try to build
those clean branches and push the binary products into a local Maven
repository.
Presumably, something like this would involve developing a Maven plugin,
some automation with a tool like Jenkins, and developing an efficient
workflow for manually annotating packages (e.g. where the <scm/> data is
missing)
Some possible outcomes of this:
a) it could provide a framework for automatically generating Debian
packages, with something closer to DFSG friendliness than a direct link
to a public Maven repo
b) it could be used to make a Debian-friendly equivalent of the Eclipse
marketplace
c) It would also expose any non-free build tools or plugins that are
relied upon in the dependency graphs of larger open source Java projects.
Has anybody else seen any similar efforts, or relevant tools that may
contribute to this, etc?
1.
http://mail-archives.apache.org/mod_mbox/maven-users/201305.mbox/%3C518B6934.2010101%40pocock.com.au%3E
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