Re: How to package Nuxeo DM, a Java EE application, in Debian

[Stefane Fermigier <sf@nuxeo.com>]

On Feb 9, 2011, at 8:40 AM, Giovanni Mascellani wrote:

> On 09/02/2011 06:12, tony mancill wrote:
>>> etc. So it seems either that nobody cares about getting these fine
>>> (and popular) applications into Debian, or it's just too hard to do
>>> given the current set of policies.
>> 
>> I think this is a fair point.  It *is* very difficult to package
>> large Java applications for Debian.  (There happens to be a similar
>> thread on this topic on debian-gis at the moment as well.)  From the
>> point of view of a software company that wants to provide a .deb of
>> their application, it is a huge amount of additional work, and it's
>> not always clear what sort of immediate return on investment this
>> will garner the software vendor.
> 
> I'd say that this one of the main added value of a distribution: many
> different pieces of software harmonized together, under a consistent
> policy so that people that want to change something in the source code
> and recompile just have to do apt-get source, hack the code and
> dpkg-buildpackage.
> 
> Of course I'm not pretending that this is going to satisfy all the kind
> of users: it's just what Debian users are expecting, so it's what Debian
> is offering to its users.

Maybe I'm an exception, but I've been a Debian user since 1997 or 1998 (not exclusively, but since that time I have always had from 1 to 30 Debian or Ubuntu servers to manage), and my home computer is an Ubuntu.

I have NEVER used "apt-get source, hack[ed] the code and dpkg-buildpackage." Not a single time.

Also, in the context of enterprise applications, you just don't want to "apt-get source, hack the code and dpkg-buildpackage." You want to run it through a massive amount of QA before putting it into production.

Cf. http://qa.nuxeo.org/ for an example of what we do at Nuxeo.

> Probably other distributions make things
> differently because they are targeted to users with different needs.
> Other users could prefer the way maven works, so they will use maven to
> install their package.

Maven is a build tool, not an installation tool.

> About the difficulty of having a Java application in Debian, I cannot
> agree more with Tony: packaging things in Debian is difficult, because
> it requires some added value that the packager must put into the
> package, and added value requires time.

This is not true, if the only thing needed was "some extra added value" there would be

> This is true especially in the
> Java environment, where many programmers put very low attention to many
> things that Debian cares about (and that have been already discussed in
> this thread). I'm not discussing who is right and who is not (though I
> have an idea about it, but it could be significantly biased): simply,
> the two ways of work have very little intersection.

We're talking about *open source* java developers, not just "java developers" here.

From my experience with working with both the Apache Foundation (I'm with the incubating Apache Chemistry and Stanbol projects), and the Eclipse Foundation (Eclipse Apogee, and a new project that willbe announced today), I can guarantee you that their processes are as annoying (or if you prefer, *rigourous* ;) that Debian's (wrt licenses, copyright notices, etc.)

> And, unfortunately, one of the core philosophies in Debian is that we're
> not trading quality for time or package number: if the available
> resources (that is, people that contribute to Debian) are scarce, then
> what we're giving up is quantity, not quality. Usually we're also able
> to offer quantity, but it's not our main focus.
> 
> BTW, in my little experience, I've already met at least two different
> pieces of software written in Java that were non free or even non
> redistributable because of licensing issues rising from putting JARs or
> copy and pasting code without checking if they were allowed to do so.
> I'm proud to say that, thanks to my work, now these pieces of software
> are really free in Debian: I'm sure this is not the only case, but it
> shows why all the thorough work that a Debian package needs it's useful.

Were these projects from "reputable" organization such as Apache or Eclipse, or open source vendors concerned with the quality of their products and minimizing the legal risk attached to their products ?

Regards,

  S.

-- 
Stefane Fermigier, Founder and Chairman, Nuxeo
Open Source, Java EE based, Enterprise Content Management (ECM)
http://www.nuxeo.com/ - +33 1 40 33 79 87 - http://twitter.com/sfermigier
Join the Nuxeo Group on LinkedIn: http://linkedin.com/groups?gid=43314
New Nuxeo release: http://nuxeo.com/dm54
"There's no such thing as can't. You always have a choice."