RE: TC 4.0 RPM Packaging - WAS: [ANNOUNCEMENT] Apache Tomcat 4.0 Fina l Release

[Christopher Cain <cc...@mhsoftware.com>]

Quoting GOMEZ Henri <hg...@slib.fr>:

> Still no answer to this question ...
> 
> Let me clarify :
> 
> RPM policies insist in having NO binary packages
> included or required to build or deploy and use 
> a tool.
>
> It's allready the case for JSSE, and if I build
> RPM against JSSE to have SSL stuff compiled, the
> requirement is not mandatory for run time operation.
>
> But now with all the required jars, it just impossible
> to have a 100% clean RPM since many of the needed jars
> should be obtained from Sun.
>  
> I could be relax a little with RPM packaging rules but
> we should have all the needed jars somewhere at apache.org.
> 
> Questions: Could we have the needed jars in a tarball somewhere
>            in TC 4.0 dist dir ?
> 

IMHO, I think whatever RPMs we provide should follow, for the most part, the 
official Redhat standard. The number of external jars required by TC4 is 
certainly problematic from an RPM point of view, especially considering the 
jars that Apache cannot redistribute (like the JSSE).

Of the two rules you mentioned, I am personally much more concerned about the 
inclusion of binaries (in our case, non-TC jar files) in the RPM itself. I 
don't think we should do that at all, and I agree with the RPM spec on that.

The rule about packages not relying on external binaries in order to operate, 
assuming I understand you right on that one, is patently ludicrous. Maybe it 
works in the GPL/C world, but there is no way that we can even hope to follow 
that rule. Hell, a JDK is required to run _anything_, so that would seem to 
implicate any Java RPMs on the planet. Like most things in life, if the rule is 
impossible to reasonably follow, I usually just ignore it altogether :)

My opinion is, the binary RPM should contain only Jakarta stuff. If there are a 
few required jars that we cannot easily redistribute, then I'm okay with 
leaving them out. Maybe we create a new top-level text doc, "RPM-README" or 
something, outlining what you need to do if you just installed the RPM distro.

- Christopher

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