Idea for wheezy development: automatic class search tool

[Vincent Fourmond <fourmond@debian.org>]

  Hello all,

  This is an idea that has been there for a long time, but I haven't
had the time yet to implement it, nor even to voice it so far. What
I'm often missing while packaging Java software is a simple too to
find which debian package holds which class. My idea is to provide a
simple alioth service doing just that, potentially with a command-line
tool to interrogate it some time later, although a web interface
should be fine enough.

  My feeling is that using a simple sql database along with crontabs
to update it should be fine. (although I'm unsure for now on which
machine the crontab would run, and how often). Candidate package would
just be those with files in /usr/share/java.

  In the long run, we could consolidate that into real diagnostics:

  * this .jar file in that package directly relies on the
foo.org.Bidule class, but not such class can be found in its
dependencies
  * this .jar has that one in its class path, but doesn't rely on it
  * careful, the version in unstable of this jar is missing that
method, on which this and that jars are relying...

  Possibilities are countless.

  How do you like the idea ?

  Cheers,

      Vincent