Re: Frustration with trying to build Debian packages from Maven-based sources

[Hilko Bengen <bengen@debian.org>]

* Emmanuel Bourg:

> 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) ?

Packages in the Debian "main" archive are built from source, so simply
downloading JARs won't work. This seems to be one of the areas where
different cultures clash. On a more practical note: Fixing bugs
independently from upstream becomes infeasible with such a scenario.

This is not to say that leveraging (parts of) the Maven infrastructure
is bad idea -- no, it is the obvious good idea! And in fact part of that
is already accomplished with mh_make, the existing CDBS rules, and the
various scripts that are used by them. Which brings me to the reason why
I started ranting in the first place: Existing tools are

    broken in a way that is obvious even to a Java-(and Maven-)novice like
    me (jh_makepkg, mvn-debian; looking forward to reactions on bugs
    #703373, #703376)

or 

    require Maven-specific expert knowledge for a task that _should_ be
    simple: Turning source code that would "normally" be easily compiled
    into .jar files and Javadoc into Debian packages (mh_make).

Even though Maven itself may not the best example for a tool that makes
easy tasks trivial and hard tasks possible, I am convinced that there is
a lot of room for improvement for integrating it into Debian and related
distributions. This goes both ways, by the way:

A software developer who wants to use Maven as a build tool on Debian
and considers himself "a mere user" of the distribution should find that
the distribution is not working against but for him. And It must be easy
for a newcomer to turn Maven-based projects into Debian packages.

Cheers,
-Hilko