news on JPackage

[Karsten 'quaid' Wade]

We've been hunting down answers on how to work across JPackage and
Fedora.  The news is mixed with a bright future.  Your help now makes
the bright future more obtainable.

The reality is that while JPackage and Fedora packages are very alike
and the packing rules are more closely aligned, there is no automagic to
make it easier to maintain one package across both systems.  By acting
now within both communities, our up front work can help support a goal
of minimizing or removing barriers between the two package repositories.

Fedora requires everything it needs to build to be entirely in the build
system.  It cannot rely upon outside repositories.  This is a
fundamental design decision.  That means that nearly the same package
from JPackage must be rebuilt in the Fedora system.

The goal is to find a way to make moving packages between the systems
fully transparent.  This cuts down significantly on package maintainers
work while allowing JPackage to service the wider RPM audience.  Jesse
Keating, Fedora Release Engineer, is one person leading this effort.  It
sounds as if help is still needed within Fedora and JPackage to move
this ahead.  There are still decisions to be made on how to proceed, we
may influence that by acting within both communities.

In the meantime, the best process to follow is this:

        1. Get Java libraries working in JPackage
        
        2. Once there, import those packages in to Fedora
           - This will be much faster with most of the work already done
        from the JPackage review
        
        3. Once forked, you need to update packages in both locations,
        syncing changes back/forth

If we can make a custom of doing these practices, it helps make the
infrastructure level changes easier to occur.

Let me know your thoughts/questions on this, I'd like to codify this on
the wiki as our policy for ISVs.

- Karsten
-- 
Karsten Wade, Sr. Developer Community Mgr.
Dev Fu : http://developer.redhatmagazine.com
Fedora : http://quaid.fedorapeople.org
gpg key : AD0E0C41
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