[Mageia-dev] Java-Policy first draft published

Thu Jan 13 02:01:14 CET 2011

Renaud MICHEL wrote:
+> On mercredi 12 janvier 2011 at 23:54, Frank Griffin wrote :
+>   
+>> Users of things like NetBeans and Eclipse are used to the mechanisms
+>> provided by those tools for managing plugin installation, and are not
+>> going to take kindly to having to use rpmdrake instead.
+>>     
+> Well, I use eclipse everyday (arrive at work, start eclipse and close it at 
+> the end of day before leaving) but I don't like its trying to duplicate what 
+> package managers do better. I want to know what' installed on may computer, 
+> how and where.
+>   
+
+I think you're the exception.
+
+> For years I used to grab the pre-build archives and manage their 
+> dependencies by hand. A few month ago, I decided to repackage those as rpms 
+> with proper dependencies between packages to have urpmi do the work for me. 
+> It was a little complicated to find in the features and packages where their 
+> dependencies were stored, to extract them automatically at package build.
+> So I was able to split it in many sub-packages to be able to install only 
+> what I need.
+> The only downside is that it is built from binary archives and not from 
+> source, but for my own use it does work well.
+>   
+
+I think you're exceptionally industrious.
+
+> Back to your remark, people who don't like to have eclipse installed via rpm 
+> simply won't. They will continue to download the tarball from eclipse.org 
+> and install the plugins they want, either from archives or update sites.
+> They can also install only the platform from the rpm and, if the -
+> configuration and -data options are properly added to eclipse startup, they 
+> will be able to install in their home dir the plugins they want using the 
+> update sites.
+>   
+
+No they won't.  They won't know anything about the distinction between
+installing via RPM or via tarball.  They'll look in rpmdrake for Eclipse
+initially, install it from there, and then use the normal Eclipse
+mechanism to install plugins.  They'll do this because we tell them to
+use rpmdrake to look for software, and they'll do the plugins the way
+they're used to or the way the Eclipse docs tell them to.
+
+> I won't comment on maven as I don't know how it works (the last time I tried 
+> to build from source a program using maven I did not find what options I was 
+> supposed to give to the mvn command to have it built).
+>
+>   
+
+Maven, like Eclipse and NetBeans, has its own infrastructure for
+obtaining artifacts (sort of like plugins).  The difference is that it
+isn't an active thing like Eclipse plugins.  Eclipse won't decide you
+need something and automatically install it; Maven will.  If Maven needs
+an artifact and it isn't already in your repository (because you
+installed some RPM that put it there), it will fetch it via HTTP
+automatically regardless of whether you have an RPM for it or not.
+
+The result of all this is that you're wasting your time trying to
+package plugins and such as RPMs for these products.  People aren't
+going to use rpmdrake for this because they are used to doing it a
+different way, and you'll end up with an unmaintainable mix of stuff
+installed via RPM and stuff installed via whatever.
+