[fedora-java] jpackage.org and FC4

[Nicolas Mailhot]

On Lun 25 juillet 2005 04:42, John M. Gabriele wrote:

> Should FC4 users be using *any* packages from jpackage.org?

jpackage.org is a kind of upstream for FC java packages. JPP was born a
few years ago when there was no free Java stack and no distro was
seriously packaging java apps. Several users of rpm distributions got
together to package Java software in an rpm format.

One of our cunning decisions was to be JVM agnostic. When gcj matured Red
Hat was able to take our packages and use them with little changes in
Fedora. There is a strong wish both Red Hat and Fedora side not to break
this flow, so the JPP and FC java repositories should be compatible
(indeed, several JPP members are active on FE or even joined Red Hat, and
several Red Hat employees  were accepted in the JPP team early this year).
The FC java stacks follows JPP packaging conventions.

JPP serves as an incubator : you can package java software that depends on
non-free java bits, or java software Red Hat is not interested in, and
when the conditions change (non-free bits get reimplemented in classpath
or interest arises) the package finds its way in FC. That also means some
software is only available in JPP today, and JPP is not pure FOSS (meaning
the answer to your original question depends on what exactly you want to
achieve).

Also JPP is open to packagers from all the rpm world (RHEL, FC, Mdk,
Novell, Solaris, OpenPKG...). We try not to depend on a particular
distribution quirk so the same packages work as-is everywhere. The team
has never been big and we've never rejected anyone.

Regards,

-- 
Nicolas Mailhot