[Ubuntu] [Geoserver-devel] GeoServer and GeoTools Debian/Ubuntu Packaging

[Andreas Tille]

On Tue, Jul 15, 2014 at 08:18:31AM -0400, Jerome Villeneuve Larouche wrote:
> Hi,
> 
> I could simply package the binaries, but my goal is to create a
> package that could be available on the official repositories and for
> that the package needs to be built from source.

+1

> Do you think this is the good approach? Do you guys think
> GeoServer/GeoTools need to be on the official repos?

I personally think this is a valuable approach and would support
this by sponsoring your packages.
 
> Concerning JAI. The JAI-Core and JAI-ImageIO package already exist,
> in non-free. From what I've seen in GeoTools' pom.xml some modules
> require JAI, this would mean that these GeoTools package would have
> to be put in non-free (I think?) since they depend on a non-free
> package and so if GeoServer depends on one of these, it would be put
> in non-free too anyway.

As Bas just explained the JAI dependency would move the package into
contrib (if it is DFSG free in itself).  Since I have some experience
with packages in non-free and specifically with JAI (from the
perspective of some medical software) I would like to adjust the view on
the non-free repository a bit.

You might argue:  Users could simply add non-free to their repositories
and then they are done and do not see the difference between a package
in main or non-free.  But this is not the case.  Non-free and contrib
repositories are not covered by a lot of QA checks inside Debian (for
instance periodic rebuilds, autopkgtests etc.) which means the quality
of the package is not guaranteed.  It also might create trouble for you
as the maintainer in case there might be some Architecture=any packages
and you need to explicitly ask for non-free autobuilders.  This all
makes a lot of work and it is a good idea to avoid this if possible.

While it seems to be hard to make JAI free (we tried in the Debian Med
team before without any response) there is another issue with this
library:  As far as I know it is not maintained any more (last changes
in upstream trunk 7 years ago) and there are people who are recommending
to use replacements (without giving proper advise what library would
exactly be able to replace JAI - it seems to me there is a lot of
confusion about this library).  In any case it does not seem to me a
sane choice to rely on an unmaintained non-free library and I think you
should teach upstream about this.  And yes, I know its a long way to
convince upstream about changing some components they are using.

Kind regards

       Andreas.

-- 
http://fam-tille.de