Re: Developing with Java on Debian

["Richard Cole" <richard.j.cole@gmail.com>]

Thanks Matt for taking the time to look through my package. Your
comments helped a lot. I've updated the package:

deb      http://debian.richcole.org.s3.amazonaws.com unstable/
deb-src  http://debian.richcole.org.s3.amazonaws.com unstable/

in line with your suggestions. I had originally mistakenly believed it
was building correctly but it was using the jar that came with the
source to create the timezone files rather than the built jar. (Hence
my confusion about the classpath in the manifest :)

After fixing that issue the process to generate the timezone files
bombs out with

 [java] Exception in thread "main" java.lang.ArithmeticException:
Adding time zone offset caused overflow

This only occurs when running with gcj on the built jar, a jar built
with gcj but run on the sun jvm on the other hand succeeds. It is also
the case that gcj requires a modification to one of the source files
to compile (it has to do with a class extending Calendar which
implements Comparable<Calendar>)

I wonder if the exception I'm getting is due to me having chosen a bad
version of gcj or whether for the time being its a showstopper for
compiling with gcj. To make some progress time being I changed the
dependency to sun-java6-jdk.

I went to create an ITP and discovered that joda-time has already been
packaged. Somehow I missed it previously. Credit to reportbug for
asking me to search :)

The current version of the package (libjoda-time-java) doesn't build
on my system. It gets the same exception as I listed above when trying
to generate the timezone files.

If an existing package doesn't build at what point is it a bug. Should
it build in the current version of testing? Is there any system that
regularly tests that existing packages are still buildable? Or is it
developers who test? I guess if it built and the tests ran before and
now it doesn't then its more likely the latest version of gcj that is
to blame.

regards,

Richard.