Re: Please review insubstantial (flamingo/substance/trident)

[Felix Natter <fnatter@gmx.net>]

tony mancill <tmancill@debian.org> writes:

>> Felix Natter <fnatter@gmx.net> writes:
>> 
>> Dear Java Team,
>> 
>>> I am looking for someone to review my "insubstantial" package":
>>>
>>>  * Package name    : insubstantial (aka flamingo/substance/trident)
>>>    Version         : 7.3+dfsg2-1
>>>    Upstream Author : Kirill Grouchnikov
>>>  * URL             : https://github.com/Insubstantial/insubstantial
>>>  * License         : BSD-3-clause
>>>    Section         : java
>> 
>> could you please consider reviewing this package?
>> 
>>> I am not filing an RFS bug yet, because we need to upload fixed r-deps
>>> as well (see below), and once the package is ok, I will port the changes
>>> as 7.3+dfsg1-1 to alioth.
>>>
>>> The current (temporary) VCS location is:
>>>   https://github.com/fnatter/insubstantial-debian
>>>
>>> (I also uploaded to mentors.d.n. for easy access:
>>> http://mentors.debian.net/package/insubstantial)
>
> Hi Felix,

hello Tony,

> I have recently been looking at the package from a copyright
> perspective, but just realized that I'm not sure I understand the plan
> for the package/transition.  It currently builds the following binary
> packages, all (or at least most) of which are already in archive owned
> by other source packages:
>
>   libflamingo-java
>   libflamingo-java-doc
>   liblaf-plugin-java
>   liblaf-plugin-java-doc
>   liblaf-widget-java
>   liblaf-widget-java-doc
>   substance
>   substance-doc
>   substance-flamingo
>   substance-flamingo-doc
>   substance-swingx
>   substance-swingx-doc
>   libtrident-java
>   libtrident-java-doc
>
> First are you confident that we want to use the insubstantial project as
> upstream for all of these?  (And what makes you confident?)

[if your question refers to "why one source package for all":]
Since version 7.3, all 7 libraries share the same upstream version,
upstream tarball, and project page
(https://github.com/Insubstantial/insubstantial).
Previously, most/all the 7 libraries had different homepages (underneath
java.net, not available any more) and independent tarballs.
So to me it seems very natural to use a single source package
for all 7.

[if your question refers to "why insubstantial at all?"]
Insubstantial 7.3 is used by freeplane 1.4, and the other r-deps also
work with it (with some rather simple patches I provide), and I think it
is _the_ source of flamingo/substance/trident as of today.
For instance, if you search for ArtifactId=flamingo on maven.org then
only the insubstantial version is returned.

> Second, will unsubstantial be able to provide JARs with the right maven
> metadata, etc. for other/new r-deps?  It seems like we're lumping the
> version numbers of all of these JARs into one - 7.3.

First question: The current gradle build system does provide
binary/source/javadoc jars, but not yet pom.xml's.

However, the libs are available on maven.org
(http://search.maven.org/#search|ga|1|insubstantial), so there
is probably an automated solution for this. I'll have to ask.
Otherwise: Can we just use (modified versions of) the
pom.xml's from maven.org?

2nd question: I think this is upstream's intention, so why not?

> Finally, if we do move forward with this, we'll need to remove the
> source packages for all of the above.

Agreed, I forgot to list this.

> What's the motivation for the big change?

As described above, it seems natural and saves a lot of
development/maintenance effort. If we split this into 7 source packages,
then either we duplicate the source code of 6 other libs, or we have to
strip 6 other libraries from the uscan tarball. Also patches to the
(gradle) build system will be duplicated across all source packages.

Cheers and Best Regards,
-- 
Felix Natter