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Big and not yet packaged Java dependencies



Hi all!

I would like to package Geogebra[1].

 [1] http://bugs.debian.org/cgi-bin/bugreport.cgi?bug=505704

Geogebra depends on some other pieces of software: some of them are
already packaged and work fine. For the others, I have some problems. I
would like to know which are the best practices in this case.

Geogebra depends, among the others on:

1. Jasymca, a CAS for Java[2]. There are two versions of Jasymca:
Geogebra uses the old one, which has been included directly in Geogebra
SVN and modified by Geogrebra authors. Is it acceptable to leave the
embedded copy of Jasymca in Geogebra? The upstream version isn't
maintained anymore (because Jasymca 2 has superseded it) and, anyway,
couldn't be used in Geogebra.

 [2] http://webuser.hs-furtwangen.de/~dersch/

2. FreeHEP, a Java library used in High Energy Physics[3]. A FreeHEP
stripped copy is also included in Geogebra SVN. FreeHEP is not yet
packaged in Debian (it has been ITP since January, but the bug, despite
questions, doesn't contain info about its current status) and it is a
really huge library. I don't think I would be able to package and
maintain it: is it acceptable for me to leave the FreeHEP embedded copy
in Geogebra until FreeHEP itself gets packaged, and then drop the
embedded copy in order to use the packaged one?

 [3] http://java.freehep.org/

3. Mathpiper, part of the Mathrider suite, another numeric and symbolic
calculator. The same issues concerning FreeHEP apply: it is quite a big
piece of software, for which I can't find any WNPP bug. Am I necessarily
required to package it, or can I keep it as an embedded copy until
someone else (or maybe also me, if at some point in the future I'll have
time) packages it independently?

Moreover, another little question: Geogebra is distributed under GPL-2+
license for the code part, but translation strings are distributed under
CC-BY-NC-ND 3.0 (and thus are non-free). Anyway, Geogebra is usable also
without translation strings (of course, it is not internationalized, but
misses no features). My idea is to package as two different source
packages geogebra (all but translations) and geogebra-data
(translations), being the first in main and the second in non-free.
Moreover, geogebra would suggest geogebra-data: is this a good solution?

Thank you, Giovanni.
-- 
Giovanni Mascellani <g.mascellani@gmail.com>
Pisa, Italy

Web: http://poisson.phc.unipi.it/~mascellani
Jabber: g.mascellani@jabber.org / giovanni@elabor.homelinux.org
GPG: 0x5F1FBF70 (FP: 1EB6 3D43 E201 4DDF 67BD  003F FCB0 BB5C 5F1F BF70)



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