Re: Questions regarding Kotlin, ITP and sponsorship of briar-headless

[Hans-Christoph Steiner <hans@at.or.at>]

Hey Nico,

I would be interested to see Briar be in Debian.  I think its only 
worthwhile to get it in as a real Debian package.  You can start by 
working with the upstream kotlin/gradle binaries with versions that 
match what is aimed for Debian/bullseye.  I think that's gradle 6.4.1. 
If you get the packaging working with the upstream gradle binary, it 
should work relatively easily with the eventual Debian binary.

The contrib script downloading a jar seems like wasted effort to me. 
For that approach, just make some generic Linux distro installer instead.

.hc

Nico Alt:
> Hello all,
>
> last week I published my Intent To Package Briar GTK for Debian
> [0][1][2]. For those not knowing, Briar [3] is a p2p messaging system
> that tries to connect to your contacts via various methods and thus
> tries to work even when governments censor the internet.
>
> Fortunately, I was already offered sponsorship for the Python-related
> parts of Briar GTK (python3-briar-wrapper and briar-gtk). It will most
> probably be maintained on behalf of Debian's Privacy Maintainers [4].
>
> Now I'm looking for help with and sponsorship of briar-headless. Briar
> Headless is the core library used by Briar GTK and is based on the same
> code as the Briar Android app. It's written in Java and Kotlin and uses
> a plain Gradle build system.
> I was following the situation around Kotlin in Debian for the last few
> months and I'm wondering whether we can get Briar GTK into Debian main
> on time for Debian Bullseye.
>
> The plan proposed by me in the ITP [2] is that briar-headless for now
> goes into Debian contrib, being a simple package that distributes the
> (hopefully reproducible) briar-headless.jar built by The Briar Project [5].
>
> Since I'm new to Debian, my questions are:
> * Is this plan applicable?
> * Do briar-gtk and python3-briar-wrapper also need to go into Debian
> contrib, if briar-headless is only available there? (Briar GTK starts up
> normally even without briar-headless and users could potentially put
> their own briar-headless.jar into _.local/share/java/_ [6])
> * Is anyone on this list willing to sponsor briar-headless?
>
> Thanks,
>
> Nico
>
> [0]: ITP briar-gtk -
> https://bugs.debian.org/cgi-bin/bugreport.cgi?bug=971524
> [1]: ITP python3-briar-wrapper -
> https://bugs.debian.org/cgi-bin/bugreport.cgi?bug=971525
> [2]: ITP briar-headless -
> https://bugs.debian.org/cgi-bin/bugreport.cgi?bug=971526
> [3]: Briar project page - https://briarproject.org/
> [4]: Privacy Maintainers on Debian Salsa -
> https://salsa.debian.org/pkg-privacy-team
> [5]: briar-headless.jar -
> https://briarproject.org/jar/briar-headless-1.2.10.jar
> [6]: Code in Briar GTK for briar-headless.jar -
> https://code.briarproject.org/briar/briar-gtk/-/blob/b9c9caa8eeec7f2eb17cc9b2314d304aea757e6b/briar-gtk/briar_gtk/define.py#L36