Bug#627362: [jitsi-dev] Git for jitsi, native Debian package?
Hi,
after a first look, jitsi won't be easy at all to package. I write down my
impressions if others want to look into the packaging and maybe you could help
a bit to make it easier. I'm sorry for any mistake in the following.
Jitsi has a LOT of dependencies, all of them committed as binaries to lib/.
The first thing for a packager (either Debian or Fedora) is to identify all
these libraries, remove them from the upstream tarball and try to compile
jitsi with the versions of the libraries available in the distribution.
This would be easier, if the dependencies would be managed, e.g. by ivy or
maven. Thus each dependency would be clearly identified.
I've found the evil json.org library of Crockford in the dependencies. The
license of this library forbids inclusion in any free software distribution:
http://www.mail-archive.com/debian-legal@lists.debian.org/msg40718.html
Maybe jitsi could be breaken up in smaller parts, separating OS dependent
stuff and optional functionality. Then a debian packager could start with the
core functionality.
The project is a mixed C/Java project. Shared C libraries are also committed
to SVN without information about their origin. It would be much much easier,
if those parts interacting with C code could be seperated from the rest of the
plain java code.
The jitsi SVN contains patches for other projects e.g. ffmpeg. In a
distribution I try of course to reuse the already packaged projects.
I don't know about OSGI, but I believe that it wouldn't be necessary to have
so many repetitive blocks to create OSGI compliant jars. Could the bnd tool
help with this?
What is your opinion? Are you interested to have jitsi in Fedora, RedHat,
Debian and Ubuntu? In this case I think the best way would be if packagers
would first work together with you to do some preparation work directly in
your repository. This in turn would be much easier if you'd use Git.
Best regards and thank you for Jitsi,
Thomas Koch, http://www.koch.ro
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