jpackage is a neat project with 'clean' RPM's for (i.e.) java. They have done a good split-up of the package (java, java-src, java-jdbc, java-alsa (!), java-doc, etc) I'd be great when those spec files are converted to ebuilds and installed in portage!
i was checking it, and really looks quite neat, it should help us a lot on creating ebuilds from source. The only thing is that this changes needs first: 1.- create /usr/share/java 2.- All jar files go inside /usr/share/java 3.- some code is specifically for rpm_mode need to do a better check about it, any comment, please post it here.
Let's think twice before we slap all .jar files into one directory. That would result in version conflicts sooner than you could say "ClassNotFound exception".
it seems like they've used the old unix library version system... -rw-r--r-- 1 root root 737886 Aug 13 12:22 ant-1.5.4.jar lrwxrwxrwx 1 root root 13 Oct 8 15:45 ant.jar -> ant-1.5.4.jar
You might also want to have a look at the debian java ML, which recently did some discussion about the whole java mess. The proposed solution for this topic is, to name jar files after the package name, including versions in the name libant1.5-java -> ant1.5.jar. Without the symlink to ant.jar. This way you have control over the later required symlinks (eclipse, tomcat). Also, a system much like your java-config --get-classpath (?) call should be introduced, based on package names and with recusive dependencies (getting the classpath for "ant" will also return things like junit and so on). I would like to get some kind of cooperation between jpackage, gentoo-java and debian-java, so that our solutions will not differ so much. The problem so far is, that debian requires, that JVMs like kaffe and gij will work with the system, which resulted in the findjava script, a way to query which of the as argument listed JVM are installed on the system. This is oposed to the '/usr/bin/java' alternative (or your java-config call). The complete discussion can be found at lists.debian.org/debian-java -> starting end of august and the last proposal is at www.katzien.de/debain/java (as deb and as source in the tar.gz) I feel that this is better suited on a ML, can you point me to one? Jan
We are creating a gentoo-java@gentoo.org mailing list for public Java-related discussions. We expect to announce it within a few days. The discussion should continue there after a call for participation on -user and -dev.
We have started cooperating heavily with the kaffe and debian guys on this one, so we can have proper interoperability between most linux and bsd systems. This means a short-term solution will not materialise, but that we will hopefully, in time, have a kick-ass system in place for java on open operating systems in general.
I've sent the second draft to gentoo-java@lists.gentoo.org. This process will take some time, but I consider this matter closed, pending more info from the developer and user crowd.