James in Debian

[Ioan Eugen Stan <st...@gmail.com>]

Hello,

I was telling everybody some time ago that I wish to package James for
Debian. Well, I did some research and found two possible solutions.
They are named jdeb [1] and Maven helper[2]. I also included other
people that showed interest in this matter. I welcome all input, so
please don't hesitate if you have something to say.

So, here is what I found:

== jdeb ==

Is a Maven plugin so we will have to modify the poms and keep some
Debian configuration file in our build tree. This is good, considering
that we will be able to package software faster and be able to
maintain the configuration. This is also bad because we will add
complexity (extra task), plus requires some knowledge or support from
a Debian Java team guy.

It is relatively easy to use as you can see here [3], but it has
another downside that will make packages created with it not included
in Debian repo: it packages all declared dependencies in the deb
archive. This creates slightly large packages.

== Maven Helper ==

Is a Debian tool that relies on regular Debian tools to build debs. It
will create good Debian packages but it has one requirement that is
(for now) impossible to meet: it requires that all dependencies are
already packaged into Debian (it builds offline).

It also supports one major version per library ( e.g. only one of 1.x,
2.x, etc.) which for Java doesn't make much sense. It does make sense
when you think about the size required to keep all library versions in
the repo.

Conclusions:

James is a large project and has a lot of dependencies which I don't
think are part of Debian. Striving to get all Apache software packaged
for Debian is a sweet dream but requires a lot of man power and
willingness and is not going to happen pretty soon. This is why I
think we should start with jdeb and provide Debian packages this way.
They will be bigger and each of them will provide all the dependencies
but I think we can find a solution that works. They will not be able
suitable for Debian inclusion but I think they will pave the way for
it.

I hope that by providing good Debian packages, we will be able to see
more people adopting James.


[1] https://github.com/tcurdt/jdeb
[2] http://wiki.debian.org/Java/MavenDebianHelper
[3] https://github.com/tcurdt/jdeb/blob/master/docs/maven.md

-- 
Ioan Eugen Stan
http://ieugen.blogspot.com/

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Re: James in Debian

[Norman Maurer <no...@googlemail.com>]

I think I would go with jdeb for now.

Bye,
Norman


2011/10/25 Ioan Eugen Stan <st...@gmail.com>:
> Hello,
>
> I was telling everybody some time ago that I wish to package James for
> Debian. Well, I did some research and found two possible solutions.
> They are named jdeb [1] and Maven helper[2]. I also included other
> people that showed interest in this matter. I welcome all input, so
> please don't hesitate if you have something to say.
>
> So, here is what I found:
>
> == jdeb ==
>
> Is a Maven plugin so we will have to modify the poms and keep some
> Debian configuration file in our build tree. This is good, considering
> that we will be able to package software faster and be able to
> maintain the configuration. This is also bad because we will add
> complexity (extra task), plus requires some knowledge or support from
> a Debian Java team guy.
>
> It is relatively easy to use as you can see here [3], but it has
> another downside that will make packages created with it not included
> in Debian repo: it packages all declared dependencies in the deb
> archive. This creates slightly large packages.
>
> == Maven Helper ==
>
> Is a Debian tool that relies on regular Debian tools to build debs. It
> will create good Debian packages but it has one requirement that is
> (for now) impossible to meet: it requires that all dependencies are
> already packaged into Debian (it builds offline).
>
> It also supports one major version per library ( e.g. only one of 1.x,
> 2.x, etc.) which for Java doesn't make much sense. It does make sense
> when you think about the size required to keep all library versions in
> the repo.
>
> Conclusions:
>
> James is a large project and has a lot of dependencies which I don't
> think are part of Debian. Striving to get all Apache software packaged
> for Debian is a sweet dream but requires a lot of man power and
> willingness and is not going to happen pretty soon. This is why I
> think we should start with jdeb and provide Debian packages this way.
> They will be bigger and each of them will provide all the dependencies
> but I think we can find a solution that works. They will not be able
> suitable for Debian inclusion but I think they will pave the way for
> it.
>
> I hope that by providing good Debian packages, we will be able to see
> more people adopting James.
>
>
> [1] https://github.com/tcurdt/jdeb
> [2] http://wiki.debian.org/Java/MavenDebianHelper
> [3] https://github.com/tcurdt/jdeb/blob/master/docs/maven.md
>
> --
> Ioan Eugen Stan
> http://ieugen.blogspot.com/
>
> ---------------------------------------------------------------------
> To unsubscribe, e-mail: server-dev-unsubscribe@james.apache.org
> For additional commands, e-mail: server-dev-help@james.apache.org
>
>

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