Bug#627362: [jitsi-dev] Re: Git for jitsi, native Debian package?
Hey Micha,
On Sun, Aug 5, 2012 at 12:27 PM, Micha Lenk <micha@debian.org> wrote:
> Hi Emil,
>
> by looking for free software alternatives for Skype available on Debian, I got
> aware of jitsi, which seems to have an awesome feature set. As it is not
> available in the official Debian archive, I looked around and found out about
> the recent efforts to package it for Debian (namely Debian bug #627362).
>
> On Tue, Nov 22, 2011 at 04:58:34PM +0100, Emil Ivov wrote:
>> On Tue, Nov 22, 2011 at 4:09 PM, Thomas Koch <thomas@koch.ro> wrote:
>> > In any case, there are some things that Jitsi should/could/must do itself to
>> > make a native package for Debian/Fedora/OpenSuse doable. I've opened jira
>> > issues for those and linked them from an umbrella issue:
>> >
>> > http://java.net/jira/browse/JITSI-996
>>
>> Ouch ... that's something that we like to avoid [0].
>>
>> We only enter issues once we've determined exactly what they are and
>> decided that we'll be fixing them at some point. I've closed the
>> issues and we'll reopen those that we agree on, if and when we do.
>> Right now we are still in the discussion stages of the debian
>> packaging. We'd first need to decide exactly what needs to be resolved
>> here and how we can do that.
>> [...]
>>
>> > We can continue to discuss the items separately in those issues.
>
> Okay, so, let's list all the issues that Thomas reported already, here again.
> For one to make them more visible, and also to get a consensus about the status
> of these issues.
Thanks for bringing them up!
> Not using an issue tracker will of course make it harder to
> keep track of the actual conclusions. But as you wanted to have it this way,
> of course I expect that you will then give your opinion on them one by one,
> more with regards to content than with regards the way we report issues.
We will of course open issues for those that we accept as such but
that can't happen until we've discussed them. We realize this is
frustrating but the alternative of simply dumping them in our tracker
would lead to ... well ... nothing. We may change our issue tracking
policy in the future, but right now, this is the only one we can
afford. Again, apologies for any inconvenience this may have caused,
and many thanks for bringing them here!
Now before, I continue, I've already mentioned in a couple of threads
that we are currently working on a debian tarball. This does imply a
lot of work since we need to come up with the generating scripts,
determine what libraries we can use as debian dependencies, implement
support for such dependencies (they won't work out of the box for
OSGi), retrieve the source code for the rest of the libs we use,
upload them to our libsrc, and make sure that they are properly build
by the Jitsi build process.
Hopefully, we would have all this by the end of the summer, early
autumn. Again, it is a lot of effort, but we realize how important it
would be for the project to get into Debian.
Another debian developer, Raphael Hertzog (CCed), will be guiding us
through the process and helping us where necessary.
Of course we'd be more than happy to also have you on board.
> -----------------------------------------------------------------------------
>
> JITSI-995 document (or manage) native dependencies (by Thomas Koch)
>
> There's no central location where one can see which C libraries of what
> version, origin and license Jitsi uses, which of them are patched, in what way
> and for what reason.
This is exactly what the libsrc directory is for. We are still working
on filling it up and we should be done by the time we finish our
debian source tarball. Also note that all the patches we have used to
patch native libs are currently in src/native
> I'm not a C developer so I don't know if there's something like Maven/Ivy for
> C that manages dependencies?
>
> -----------------------------------------------------------------------------
>
> JITSI-994 Use Ivy or Maven to manage java dependencies (by Thomas Koch)
>
> It is hard for a distro (Debian/Fedora/Suse) packager to find out which java
> dependencies Jitsi has. A pom.xml or ivy.xml would make things much easier
> and then the dependencies could also be removed from SVN.
Same as above: our libsrc should resolve this.
> -----------------------------------------------------------------------------
>
> JITSI-993 get rid of json.org java dependency (by Thomas Koch)
>
> The json.org java library is non-free according to Debian and maybe also
> other distros.
It kind of appears so indeed. Although the thread below does also show
rough consensus on the fact that it is unlikely for the statement to
be a problem in a court of law.
Still we do understand precautionary measures.
> As long as jitsi depends on json.org it can not enter the
> Debian archive.
Right. Luckily, json.org is used for a particularly non-centric
feature in Jitsi (creating ippi.com accounts). We'll have a quick look
for alternatives and use one if it's not too much trouble. If it is,
we'll just remove the feature from the debian version.
> http://www.mail-archive.com/debian-legal@lists.debian.org/msg40718.html
>
> -----------------------------------------------------------------------------
>
> JITSI-997 Provide a source only tarball (by Thomas Koch)
>
> Linux distributions want to build their packages and all dependencies of
> those themselves. So it must be possible to download a source distribution of
> jitsi (prefarable as .tar.gz or .tar.bz2) that does not contain any
> third-party binaries and build jitsi from this source distribution with the
> help of the dependencies existing in the distro.
That's what we are currently working on. I have just reopened the
issue so that whoever's interested would be able to track progress.
http://java.net/jira/browse/JITSI-997
Thank you for creating it.
> -----------------------------------------------------------------------------
>
> JITSI-998 review and document licenses and origins of images in jitsi
> (by Thomas Koch)
>
> A distro packager needs to be sure that the images coming with Jitsi can be
> distributed under a free license. If the images are taken from common sets
> like Tango it would even be preferable for a packager to not ship the images
> in the jitsi package but to depend on the tango package of the distribution.
All Jitsi image have been designed by Jitsi developers. Besides we are
currently working on integrating new set of icons and labels that
BlueJimp's Joro Gomes has created for us, so there shouldn't be any
issues there.
> -----------------------------------------------------------------------------
>
> I am looking forward to read your comments on these issues.
Thanks again for taking the issues here and please let us know if you
have any other questions
Cheers,
Emil
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