[Ubuntu] [Live-demo] UbuntuGIS - Google Summer of Code - packaging Java based OSGeo applications

[Hamish]

[taking this off the live dvd ml]

Alex:
> Wild guess, this might be in relation to the rumors that maven can 

> directly lead to deb packaging in line with the normal build procedure 
> of many Java apps.

cmake can do something similar, direct to rpm and deb, but again lumping
everything in a dir into a package isn't hard, the hard part is ticking
off all the boxes to make the policy manual happy. (e.g. no image files
in /usr/lib, separate packages for docs and platform independent parts,
scripts to generate any binary data files, copyright provinance audits,..)
You'll get a working package, but to get it accepted beyond a ppa the
hard work is generally in dealing with the last 5% meta details.

> I don't know the details but it's been mentioned to 
> me a few times. There was also some technical bit I didn't quite 
> understand about how to push Java apps to Debian and Ubuntu build 
> servers, since they didn't use to have the JAVA build chain on them but 
> I think do in some way now.
> 
> Maybe step 1, is clarify the procedure.
> 
> I agree josm might be a good place to look.

this is probably the best place to start:
  http://wiki.debian.org/Java#Developers_-_Java_packaging_work_in_Debian

more on the maven-debian-helper script there, looks pretty straight forward.


thanks,
Hamish