[Fedora-packaging] Java packaging guidelines draft

[Deepak Bhole]

* Tom spot Callaway <tcallawa at redhat.com> [2008-03-27 16:26]:
> On Thu, 2008-03-27 at 15:54 -0400, Deepak Bhole wrote:
> > * Tom spot Callaway <tcallawa at redhat.com> [2008-03-27 15:25]:
> > > On Thu, 2008-03-27 at 15:13 -0400, Deepak Bhole wrote:
> > > > An important reason we need the jpp in there currently is to maintain 
> > > > compatibility with JPackage.
> > > 
> > > We have never supported repository mixing. If anything, this serves as a
> > > good reason that JPackage should drop their disttag.
> > >
> > 
> > How many other repositories are there with the entire stack duplicated?
> > (not being sarcastic.. I really don't know of any). I know that there
> > were conflicts with Livna and what not a while ago, but those were for a
> > handful of packages only.
> > 
> > As for JPackage dropping their release tag policy -- not to be the devil's
> > advocate, but they were here before Fedora...
> > 
> > I have heard of numerous requests for technical arguments as to why the
> > string is needed. But where the technical arguments as to why it should
> > be removed? From what I have seen so far, reasons for that are pretty
> > much "Because it looks better, because it a policy, etc."
> 
> It causes rpm ordering to be painful. The Version and Release should be
> wholly numeric, whenever they aren't, rpm's ordering gets rather
> non-intuitive. We've defined special, strictly controlled cases when it
> is ok to have non-numeric characters in the version or release
> (especially release), but only when there is a real need.
>

Okay, thanks for the clarification.
 
> So, again, where is the real need for tacking jpp on the end of Release?
> 

The need is compatibility with JPackage. Our Java stack is simply not
big enough. Most of the Java packages in Fedora have gone in as direct
and indirect dependencies of Eclipse and Maven. In other words, JPackage
still has a large selection of directly usable Java apps.

*IF* we can convince JPackage to drop jpp, all would be fine. If we
cannot -- are we willing to lose compatibility?

Btw, there is also middleground that I haven't seen being discussed:
What if we drop the "jpp", but keep the X from Xjpp? So foo-1.0-1jpp
becomes foo-1.0-1.1 in Fedora.

This would maintain compatibility, and would give us numeric releases.

The above compromise would cause us to lose the ability to gather a list
of packages in the Java stack/common packages (with JPackage) though.

Deepak