Sorry for catching this thread lately.
There are already several existing java packaging project. See RPMS for java
development (http://freshmeat.net/projects/rpms4java/), recentely announced
on sourceforge, and jpackage project (http://jpackage.sourceforge.net), which
wasn't publicy announced yet.
I'll speak for the second one, as i'm one of the packager, along with
Cristian Zoffoli (another cooker folk), Henry Gomez (official jakarta
packager), and Pete Chown. The goal for the project are double :
- create and maintain a set of high-quality coherent java package for several
Linux distributions (currently Mandrake & RedHat)
- discuss and create standard for java packaging
For the first point, see current package list
(http://jpackage.sourceforge.net/packages.php)
For the second, we created a dedicated mailing list,
[EMAIL PROTECTED] May i invite everyone interested to
follow the discussion on this list, as there will be other people interested
here ?
Now that i've advertised my own business :-), about the on-going discussion:
-/usr/share/java is a widely-agredd consensus location for java file, for
their arch-independant nature. Structure under this root is unclear, altough.
For the moment, i store directly jar file under this root, and create subdirs
for apps, on the same model as /usr/lib and /usr/lib/postgres, for instance.
Using distinct directories for class files and jar files could be a good
point, but i would like to use the standard names lib and classes then.
-directly adding every class and jar file fo CLASSPATH is wrong IMHO,
whatever the way used (script, link to JDK_HOME/lib/ext dir, and so on),
because it adds lots of useless symbols for the classloader, and can provoke
name clashes. It's a lot better to have launch script establishing correct
CLASSPATH before starting application.
--
Guillaume Rousse <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
GPG key http://bohm.snv.jussieu.fr/~rousse/gpgkey.html
