Re: FLOSS and servlets: recommendations

[MrDemeanour <mrdemeanour@jackpot.uk.net>]

Andrew Vaughan wrote:
> Debian stable is uh, stable.  Except for security bugs or other
> serious bugs, it doesn't get updated.

I see. I've read  Kraft's "Debian System" book several times, but I
hadn't twigged that stable can't get packages added to it. So if I want
to run Tomcat on main, than I need a machine tht isn't running Sarge.
OK, thanks.

> If you prefer tomcat4, why not just use the packages in contrib.
> Everything in contrib is supposed to be free software.  It just has
> build and/or runtime dependencies on non-free software.

That was a bit of a throwaway; if I have to be non-free at all, I may as
well go the whole hog, and run it on Windoze. I'm not up for compromises.
> If you want to use debian's Tomcat5 packages, then a quick look at
> the dependencies suggest that a mixed sarge/etch system is probably
> ok iff you're prepared to run a Sun/IBM jre/jdk.

Yup. See above. If it's not free, then I don't really see the point of
struggling with it atg all.

> You could also create an etch chroot and run Tomcat from there.

I know what chroot is supposed to do; but I'm no linux guru, and I don't
yet understand how I can use chroot to isolate etch from a system that
thinks it's Sarge. I'll have to look into that.

> > Is there some place I can keep up-to-date on what is going on with 
> > Tomcat 5.5 in Etch?
> You could subscribe to the individual packages at 
> http://packages.qa.debian.org/t/tomcat5.html 
> http://packages.qa.debian.org/t/tomcat5.5.html

Yah. My mailbox will complain - those tend to generate bot traffic. I
meant human-originated stuff.

[snippage]

> Jetty is in contrib (unstable only).  A quick look shows no obvious
> reason why it couldn't be moved to main, so it may still be in
> contrib purely because no-ones gotten around to moving it.  (It
> build-depends on ant, which was in contrib when Jetty was first
> uploaded.)

Java stuff tends to depend on ant; I read something that seemed to say
that ant was licence-dodgy, at some point in time. Pages need timestamps!
> <snip>
>
> > I'm still at a loss to understand why it's so hard to find pages on
> > the web that deal with the state of servlets on free operating
> > systems, and are also up-to-date.
>
> Both of the following google queries turn up over 10 pages of
> results. Whether they're any good is of course another matter. 
> http://www.google.com/search?q=tomcat+debian 
> http://www.google.com/search?q=tomcat+linux

Yeah, those are the links I've been exploring for the last week or so.
> > The impression I have is that people who run servlets on Debian
> > today don't really care too much about freeness. They all seem to
> > be using Sun runtimes. But I haven't been searching on "Fedora
> > servlets" - perhaps FC5 is the way to go. Seems a shame.
>
> I suspect that many of people hosting commercial apps are probably
> running on top of Sun's/IBM's jre/jdk, mainly because Sun's jre/jdk
> is the implementation that things tend to be tested/certified
> against.  (And in the commercial hosting world, where downtime equals
> dollars, that matters).

My background is mainly commercial, and my last employer relied on Sun.
But if I'm going to be freeee, I want to be completely freeee.
> A good place to ask is probably somewhere the J2EE developers hang
> out, eg the javalobby.org forums.

Yeah, I may end up there eventually.

> > But I'd sooner do it with Debian/Sarge/main, even if that means I
> > can't use Tomcat. And I don't mind participating in a testing
> > effort. It's not a commercial project that I'm doing, after all.
>
> Testing is always welcome, but there is little point testing sarge,
> since sarge is stable, and only serious bugs will be fixed.

See above; I hadn't twigged that Sarge can't have packages inserted, if
they're OK.
> HTH

Yes, your remarks have beeen very helpful!

Best regards,
Jack.