Re: ant dependency on jython and antlr
I'm not sure about jython (haven't looked), but optional.jar has the
glue for junit (->junit task). Junit knows nothing about ant.
I think the dependency on junit sort of makes sense since it can be
considered a basic tool for java developers. The same cannot be said of
jython and antlr.
AFAIK the junit task is in the optional.jar.
Agreed with that. The change concerned jython and antlr.
What you suggests is 'could be
used from make programms' Suggests: make.
The difference is that no 'glue' is needed for a Makefile to make use of
a program.
Yes, thats true. Only that a user won't know the difference...
I don't see the problem from the user's point of view. If he wants to
use ant for development, he will 'apt-get install ant'.
This is already done: ant dows provide all tasks in optional.jar and
IMO, it shouldn't Suggests: ant :)
Are you implying that only ant is supposed to provide ant tasks?
No, but all other packages will have mostly one purpose: adding a
task. For them to Depends: on ant would be kind of natural.
Not necessarily. For instance, I am packaging a compiler, that happens
to include a ant task. It's not its main purpose, just a additional feature.
[splitting optional.jar]
It's a possible design, which sounds ok to me. Alternatively, what would
be wrong with including the task in the package that provides the
underlying facility?
Nothing, but it's quite a task to coordinate that or even provide
pacthes for upstream and telling apache ants people to stop including
that tak in there distribution...
I'm not asking for the upstream ant to be broken into pieces, because I
agree it would be lots of work. if somebody wants to do it, fine!
We have the same problem (optional.jar surely will not compile without
junit installed), but we distribute binary packages, so we could add
only suggests and the actual packages, which use the task could
Depends: on the 'functionality' package. gentoo doesn't have that
option, as they build from source...
I'm fine with ant Depends junit, but not jython or antlr. Ant could
Build-depend on them, of course.
Regarding the symlinks, I think they rather belong to jyton and antlr,
as this makes sure they are not dangling. However I'm fine with the
original solution too (have them in ant). Dangling symlinks are not a
policy violation or
Anyway, the more I have to do with java packaging, the more braindead
it seems to me...
Now, don't be pessimistic! There _has_ to be a way to do things right ;-)
Daniel
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