Re: GNU/Linux Java Policy and Packaging

[Paul Cager <paul@paulcager.org>]

Petteri Räty wrote:
> manfred@mosabuam.com kirjoitti:
>> Quoting Marcus Better <marcus@better.se>:
>>
>>> Tom Marble wrote:
>>>> Packaging
>>>> ---------
>>> I think we need to add:
>>>
>>> * Library ABI handling and support for parallel installation of multiple
>>> versions (as discussed in another thread [1]).
>>>
>>> Marcus
>>>
>>> [1] http://thread.gmane.org/gmane.linux.debian.devel.java/6537
>> Thanks for mentioning it. I second that notion.
>>
>> manfred
>>
>>
> 
> We solved this by installing to /usr/share/<pkg>-<slot> where slot is
> roughly the ABI (we increase it every time a new version breaks
> something using the library).

That's interesting - a compromise between keeping *every* version of the
Jar, and just the latest.

A couple of questions spring to mind:

*  How do you detect when a new version breaks the ABI? It seems quite
complicated. Do you use a tool to compare the classes / method
signatures, etc, or do you only bump the slot number if an application
fails?

* Supposing I (as an end-user) download an application (not packaged by
gentoo) which requires version 1.5 of foo.jar; how would I translate
that to a slot number?

Thanks,
Paul