Re: Frustration with trying to build Debian packages from Maven-based sources
On Sun, Mar 17, 2013 at 4:59 PM, Emmanuel Bourg <ebourg@apache.org> wrote:
> Le 17/03/2013 16:47, Hilko Bengen a écrit :
>
>> I don't mean to offend anyone here nor belittle hard work that has gone
>> into the mentioned tools, but can't we do better than this?
>
> What about leveraging the Maven infrastructure and downloading the
> dependencies directly from the central Maven repository (or a Debian
> operated mirror) instead of repackaging every single jar into it's own
> deb file (as long as it's open source of course) ?
>
> Let say I'm building the package for NetClipse IDEA, the next big Java
> IDE, and it depends on Commons Collections 10. I would declare a
> dependency in the control file that might look like this:
>
> Depends: maven:org.apache.commons:commons-collections (>=10)
>
> And the dependency would be downloaded and installed by apt.
>
> Just a wild dream...
There was a pretty good blog post from the Maven community about this
problem exactly one year ago [1] which was in response to another post
[2]. The general summary is that the two projects are philosophically
different (the "culture clash"), to the point where the popular
features of Maven (binary-only distribution, multiple versions of the
same libraries, libraries distributed as-needed over the Internet) are
explicitly prohibited in Debian. A Debian operated mirror wouldn't be
enough, we'd need volunteers scouring the licensing and source code of
all the libraries in that mirror (and infrastructure to support that
effort). It might be possible to work something out that is better,
but someone needs to do it and the best work so far has been done with
the maven-repo-helper and related spec.
~Scott
[1] http://kohsuke.org/2012/03/16/debian-and-maven-a-crash-of-culture/
[2] http://discursive.com/2012/03/15/the-debian-java-package-team-futility-defined/
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