Hello Steffen, thanks for your prompt reply and the useful hints for working with Java packages!
Best, Florian Am 09.02.2012 09:39, schrieb Steffen Möller: > Hello Florian, > > On 02/08/2012 05:36 PM, Florian Rothmaier wrote: >> I work on an astronomy project called "Virtual Observatory" (VO) at >> the University of Heidelberg. In our working group, we had the idea to >> start Debian-packaging of VO-related software widespreadly used by >> professional and amateur astronomers. >> >> By creating Debian packages of VO-related libraries and applications, >> we aim at facilitating the installation and maintenance of VO clients >> on Debian(-derived) systems and the distribution of astronomical >> software and its dependencies within the open-source community. > this is a very nice idea. Much appreciated. >> One of our projects is the dpkging of the graphical viewer and data >> editor TOPCAT, see >> http://www.star.bris.ac.uk/~mbt/topcat/ . >> >> When I started my packaging work, I had to note that a large number of >> external libs required by TOPCAT comes along in .jar archives. >> Fortunately, some of them have already been dpkged (e.g. >> libdomj4-java, libjetty-java or libjfreechart-java), others haven't. I >> understood that I would have to focus on the prerequisites for >> packaging TOPCAT, i.e. on generating local Debian packages for >> TOPCAT's dependencies. > This is very typical of all those Java beasts. >> Right now, I have ~10 Debian packages of Java libraries ready, so far >> only available on my local machine. >> I would be very grateful for any hint or suggestion on the best way I >> should proceed with my astronomy packaging project. > For a functional .deb, albeit not redistributable within Debian, you can > still have the one or other .jar shipping along your own software. My > suggestion is to one-by-one remove one of those of your end-user-package > into a separate Debian package and keep testing the functionality of > your software. Especially when sharing with other packages, more > complex Java software tends to have pesky version dependencies that > sometimes only manifest at runtime. > > The regular Java bits I indeed suggest to leave with pkg-java. When it > gets more astronomical, consider also the Debian Science community. > > For communication with others you may use the mentors.debian.net, but > many also like using an Ubuntu PPA, so you get a free build daemon. > > Best, > > Steffen > > > > > > __ This is the maintainer address of Debian's Java team <http://lists.alioth.debian.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/pkg-java-maintainers>. Please use [email protected] for discussions and questions.
