From mboxrd@z Thu Jan 1 00:00:00 1970 Received: from lists.gentoo.org ([140.105.134.102] helo=robin.gentoo.org) by nuthatch.gentoo.org with esmtp (Exim 4.60) (envelope-from ) id 1Fz9JH-0004u9-Ga for garchives@archives.gentoo.org; Sat, 08 Jul 2006 09:41:11 +0000 Received: from robin.gentoo.org (localhost [127.0.0.1]) by robin.gentoo.org (8.13.7/8.13.6) with SMTP id k689eKJ4012548; Sat, 8 Jul 2006 09:40:20 GMT Received: from wx-out-0102.google.com (wx-out-0102.google.com [66.249.82.204]) by robin.gentoo.org (8.13.7/8.13.6) with ESMTP id k689eJtl023717 for ; Sat, 8 Jul 2006 09:40:20 GMT Received: by wx-out-0102.google.com with SMTP id t5so2873096wxc for ; Sat, 08 Jul 2006 02:40:19 -0700 (PDT) DomainKey-Signature: a=rsa-sha1; q=dns; c=nofws; s=beta; d=gmail.com; h=received:message-id:date:from:to:subject:cc:in-reply-to:mime-version:content-type:content-transfer-encoding:content-disposition:references; b=aqxYKG0JvQETgrCMIDfK7fNOb58vt6oC9BIPUm1KNoOj4dGKpqLmm0nvsZT9+yT0ilSAfEFY3r8R9BIxQWZ0xr7PJPLUMI6zlG2NauJseflBZ0/FuPN+5Y+E85GN1S+eiEc1AY8Oik71+Fq+jXkLubZ9oYpJ+JV0TvN3P9xZKuQ= Received: by 10.70.113.15 with SMTP id l15mr2333048wxc; Sat, 08 Jul 2006 02:40:19 -0700 (PDT) Received: by 10.70.63.16 with HTTP; Sat, 8 Jul 2006 02:40:19 -0700 (PDT) Message-ID: <254054bc0607080240r6be2968ayff4ff2aa17580f2e@mail.gmail.com> Date: Sat, 8 Jul 2006 11:40:19 +0200 From: "Wiktor Wandachowicz" To: "William L. Thomson Jr." Subject: Re: [gentoo-java] Netbeans Cc: gentoo-java In-Reply-To: <1152324992.30603.10.camel@wlt.obsidian-studios.com> Precedence: bulk List-Post: List-Help: List-Unsubscribe: List-Subscribe: List-Id: Gentoo Linux mail X-BeenThere: gentoo-java@gentoo.org MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=ISO-8859-1; format=flowed Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit Content-Disposition: inline References: <4e2f58480607071829g2ccf0c12jcfade2fac87c75bf@mail.gmail.com> <1152324992.30603.10.camel@wlt.obsidian-studios.com> X-Archives-Salt: b4024245-5d2d-4aa2-bed5-c1446b5babf1 X-Archives-Hash: 143630382fbbf71f3da5470aa33091c5 2006/7/8, William L. Thomson Jr. : > On Fri, 2006-07-07 at 21:29 -0400, nil nil wrote: > > Shouldn't netbeans 5 be put in the portage tree? > > Yes, but no one has really stepped up to maintain Netbeans ebuilds. > I started to work on it, but instead of focusing on 5 or older, I > started with Netbeans 5.5 Beta. There is a ebuild for that in the > migration packages overlay. This is the reason and a temporary solution. Add to this the fact that NetBeans have a Linux executable installer as well as .zip / .tar.gz archive of ready-to-run application. It's perfectly installable in /opt, for example. So, there's not much incentive to toroughly work on this right now. In Gentoo the goal is to compile every package from sources if possible. It should use already existing jars from previously installed packages, too. So it could for example benefit from security updates or version upgrades to the respective packages. This is a general direction that Gentoo takes: no prepackaged binary jars should be used, unless necessary. The crown example and a problem without current resolution is Maven, which brings a lot of jars in its own repositiories. In essence it means that for complex Java packages the whole build and packaging process needs to be different (to some degree) from the one used by the developers. For example, in Linux packages spread their files in different directories with different permissions (binaries, libraries, docs, manuals, working dirs/files, etc.), whereas typical "big" Java packages provide all their files in a single directory. This is an additional burden for Gentoo maintainers. And the real reason why some packages "lag" behind. But still the binary versions of said packages run perfectly under Gentoo: NetBeans, Eclipse, Tomcat, GlassFish... But they need to be put in their own separate directories, with all dependencies underneath. So, even if they have some jars in common, they cannot share them. Depending on your POV this is good (easy deinstallation or upgrade by removal of a single directory) or bad (inconsistency with the general philosophy of packaging in Gentoo and package management by Portage). OTOH package management tools in Linux already provide solutions for problems that become to occur to Java packages. Dependencies are the first thing that comes to my mind. Every non-trivial Java program requires a number of libraries in the form of jar files to perform its function. Said libraries have to be provided by every application, so they are duplicated and cannot be easily upgraded in the event of a repaired bug or security issue. Currently it requires lots of manual work, so every existing copy of each library has to be tracked and upgraded independently. Maven tries to solve this problem by providing a vast number of existing *binary* packages (jars) that projects under development can use. But still, they are binary files. I know, there are notions of providing sources for such jars in Maven, but many packages don't do it properly. These are some reasons why Maven is not fully supported in Gentoo/Portage yet. However, you can always install it by hand. But keeping all the manually installed packages up to date is, frankly, hard to do. Remember, in Gentoo the source code is the most important and gives the most flexibility. This is a general problem with Java packaging that the world will have to tackle sooner or later. Or we will have another "dependency hell" (or make it "the jar hell") upon us. But the whole upstream is not aware of the problem yet - if it works why break it? Yes, it works today. But we're talking on a long-term problems here. Which, I think, Gentoo is able to avoid in a clean, comprehensive way. If I missed sth or said sth fundamentaly wrong, please tell me. Regards, Wiktor Wandachowicz -- Registered Linux user #390131 (http://counter.li.org) -- gentoo-java@gentoo.org mailing list