Re: Guidance for packaging Java programs

[Bruno Victal]

Hi Julien,

On 2023-07-13 18:48, Julien Lepiller wrote:
> I've never seen anything like saxon-he sources. It looks like a bunch of zip 
> files that contain java files with no build system. The ant-build-system 
> might be able to build that, though no idea how much dependencies there could 
> be.

It looks like the Saxon-HE sources are actually “generated” from this 
repository:
<https://saxonica.plan.io/projects/saxonmirrorhe/repository>

> If you feel like helping, maybe an importer would be a good first step :). 
> You should be able to get info from Maven Central (get the pom files, they 
> are XML files and we have a module somewhere to handle them (guix build maven 
> pom) I think). It should work for maven and gradle packages at least. Mapping 
> maven name to guix names might also be challenging, but we can solve with an 
> upstream-name property.[…]

> To summarize, the main pain points are: lots of dependencies that can quickly 
> go out of hand, source buildability is not great, as many ship their own 
> versions of their dependencies (we need to snippet pre-built jars away, and 
> find a workaround when the build fails to find them), and bootstrappability, 
> as there can be quite a lot of dependency circles.

I wonder if this is doable for the java uninitiated.
(Why bother with Java when you can write in Guile? :D)
An importer first would certainly be a step in the right direction, yes.
(handcrafting package definitions for dependencies and dependencies of
said dependencies is no fun)


-- 
Furthermore, I consider that nonfree software must be eradicated.

Cheers,
Bruno.