On Mon, 8 Jun 2026 at 02:36, Michael Bien <[email protected]> wrote:
> This means that the second option ("Bring back into ASF") would be possible 
> without disrupting downstream packaging since the JDK could be moved into a 
> dependency (if it isn't already one like with AUR and flathub).

Possibly.  You and I are amongst PMC members who have raised concerns
about FoAN shipping unsupported JDK combinations.  With the zip bundle
it is very obviously designed to allow the end user to choose which
JDK to run the IDE with.  With packages like that we would need to be
careful how the JDK dependency is resolved, particularly if the
installation makes this more difficult to configure (eg. netbeans.conf
being read-only).  We sometimes had issues with this before.

It's worth noting Laszlo's comment on a recent Snap issue about the
benefit of moving that outside of ASF so that the JDK dependency could
be included - 
https://github.com/apache/netbeans/issues/9392#issuecomment-4558885625

> Of course the signing problem remains + someone would have to do that task 
> during release which is already full with other tasks (looking at the new, 
> slightly intimidating checklist).

For anyone interested, Eric's checklist of tasks for the current
release process is at
https://github.com/apache/netbeans-jenkins-lib/issues/146  We were
joking about how all this is the short version since
https://lists.apache.org/thread/w02bvdnzdorlsco2cpfyhvnkzbscydcz when
we dropped both installers and the update centers.  This reduced some
of the release overhead.

The update centers were a significant job to remove.  The macOS
installer was the bigger installer overhead, as it was the only one
that had to be built and signed manually.

If we were to bring installers back into ASF, we could use a workflow
like the one I currently use for the community installers -
https://github.com/codelerity/netbeans-packages  That is the subject
of the discussion on the security-discuss list.  That builds and signs
every installer in about 5min.  The workload is making a process like
that ASF compliant to access the foundation's code signing.  The
additional release overhead is there, but would be less than our
previous process.  Testing and gpg sign off for vote would probably
need to be shared out.

The other point I would make is that a PMC member has been doing that
task during the release process for the last 18 months - me!   FoAN
was meant to be providing infrastructure for PMC members to share
access to things that cannot be done within ASF.  Assuming that is
made to work as intended, the release overhead should be similar
whether it's done internally or externally.  Whether we can actually
do that with our current resources is part of this conversation.
Option #1 is the only one that removes workload.

Best wishes,

Neil

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