Re: Importing sources (?)

["Nic Ferrier" <nferrier at tapsellferrier dot co dot uk>]

>>> Tom Tromey <tromey@cygnus.com> 27-Nov-00 7:11:01 AM >>>
>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?

I'm not a GCJ developer but I am involved in other GNU java efforts.
I think this is a bad idea:

- you'll have to be merging files from other repositories all the
time
(or you'll end up like Kaffe - with a 3 year out of date
servlet.jar)

- where do you draw the line on what is included?

- the GCJ repository is not the logical place for all extension code
it should be part of the OS distribution


Debian maintainers are trying to work out a policy for packaging Java
stuff, ie:
- where does the VM and it's libs go?
- where do extension jars go?
- where do servlet WAR files go?

Perhaps you guys at redhat should speak to them about some of these
ideas.

I've been thinking about getting those doing Java work within the GNU
project involved in a more co-operative system. Some ideas were:

- have a better precense on GNU website
- organise the gnu. package namespace better
- setup a web CVS that includes all parts of the GNU java project


What I'd like to do in the long term is tweak CVS so that modules
could be made up of local and remote repository directories, we could
then have a single GNU-Java CVS repository that was a collection of
the many different projects organised in some sensible way.


Anybody like those ideas?



Nic