[Ubuntu] GeoServer and GeoTools Debian/Ubuntu Packaging

[Andreas Tille]

Hi Jérôme,

On Mon, Jul 14, 2014 at 02:03:28PM -0400, Jerome Villeneuve Larouche wrote:
> My name is Jérôme and I'm currently working on a GSoC project to
> package differents GIS Softwares and one of goals this summer is
> working on packaging Java softwares like GeoServer and GeoTools.

Thanks for working on this.
 
> I know there is already a GeoServer package, but it's not built in a
> way that would be accepted on Debian, that is why I want to create
> proper GeoServer and GeoTools packages.

+1

> I've been looking into GeoTools first since the majority of Java GIS
> softwares depends on it. From what I can see, GeoTools is composed
> of many modules(100+) which are all independent jars.

I wonder why you think there is a bunch of jars.  When looking at

  https://github.com/geotools/geotools/releases

I can find release tarballs containing Java source code (only a few
jahrs in the test suite).
 
> After that
> I've started listing every dependencies that would need packaging or
> repackaging for the right version or to be compatiable with
> Maven-Debian-Helper. Since the list is pretty big, I thought I could
> start by only packaging some modules. That's why I looked into which
> modules GeoServer needed.

I admit I do not have any experience what might be the best approach to
this but if I were you I would consult the Debian Java list[1] to get
some help.  I personally feel not competent to give some reasonable
advise whether modularising the source tarball is the best
straightforward approach to tackle this.

> I also tried to manually build only single modules independently. It
> works, but from what I understand they still get all the
> dependencies from the main "pom.xml", are they all needed?
> 
> It seems GeoServer is still using many modules. So, would it be
> possible to create a Basic GeoServer with only a small part of the
> dependencies?

It might make sense to modularise only the binary packages and build
from the original source tarball.
 
> I've been told that JAI could be a problem, but it seems to be
> packaged in Ubuntu's multiverse and Debian non-free. That would make
> any packages depending on it non-free, but I don't think this is too
> much of a problem.
> I was also wondering if there could be any other problem with
> license and redistribution?

See my other mail about this.

> These are pretty much all the questions I have for now, I might need
> your help again in the future as I advance.

Hope this helps

      Andreas.

[1] https://lists.debian.org/debian-java/ 

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