Importing sources (?)

[Tom Tromey <tromey at cygnus dot com>]

Today I started trying to build a tree that includes both libgcj and
other free software Java pieces.  My particular tree includes parts of
Cryptix and javax.servlet.  However, there are other bits out there:
SAX/XML stuff, audio stuff, and CORBA (at least).

Assuming licensing problems can be worked out, and assuming that we
can get the blessing of the package developers, do you think it would
be worthwhile to import packages like this into libgcj?

On the downside is increased maintenance burden.  If we find a bug we
have to know where to report it.  We'll have to deal with multiple
conflicting coding styles.  Plus which every new package increases the
already-long build times.

However, there's a lot of stuff out there.  It isn't always easy to
find it or to get it to build.  So on the plus side, we'd provide it
all in a single repository ready for use.  And, since we'd rebuild it
regularly, we'd at least know that the compiler wouldn't break on it.
Finally, a lot of this stuff we probably just don't have the manpower
to rewrite (eg CORBA).

Tom