[Mageia-dev] Java-Policy first draft published

Frank Griffin ftg at roadrunner.com
Thu Jan 13 02:01:14 CET 2011


Renaud MICHEL wrote:
> On mercredi 12 janvier 2011 at 23:54, Frank Griffin wrote :
>   
>> Users of things like NetBeans and Eclipse are used to the mechanisms
>> provided by those tools for managing plugin installation, and are not
>> going to take kindly to having to use rpmdrake instead.
>>     
> Well, I use eclipse everyday (arrive at work, start eclipse and close it at 
> the end of day before leaving) but I don't like its trying to duplicate what 
> package managers do better. I want to know what' installed on may computer, 
> how and where.
>   

I think you're the exception.

> For years I used to grab the pre-build archives and manage their 
> dependencies by hand. A few month ago, I decided to repackage those as rpms 
> with proper dependencies between packages to have urpmi do the work for me. 
> It was a little complicated to find in the features and packages where their 
> dependencies were stored, to extract them automatically at package build.
> So I was able to split it in many sub-packages to be able to install only 
> what I need.
> The only downside is that it is built from binary archives and not from 
> source, but for my own use it does work well.
>   

I think you're exceptionally industrious.

> Back to your remark, people who don't like to have eclipse installed via rpm 
> simply won't. They will continue to download the tarball from eclipse.org 
> and install the plugins they want, either from archives or update sites.
> They can also install only the platform from the rpm and, if the -
> configuration and -data options are properly added to eclipse startup, they 
> will be able to install in their home dir the plugins they want using the 
> update sites.
>   

No they won't.  They won't know anything about the distinction between
installing via RPM or via tarball.  They'll look in rpmdrake for Eclipse
initially, install it from there, and then use the normal Eclipse
mechanism to install plugins.  They'll do this because we tell them to
use rpmdrake to look for software, and they'll do the plugins the way
they're used to or the way the Eclipse docs tell them to.

> I won't comment on maven as I don't know how it works (the last time I tried 
> to build from source a program using maven I did not find what options I was 
> supposed to give to the mvn command to have it built).
>
>   

Maven, like Eclipse and NetBeans, has its own infrastructure for
obtaining artifacts (sort of like plugins).  The difference is that it
isn't an active thing like Eclipse plugins.  Eclipse won't decide you
need something and automatically install it; Maven will.  If Maven needs
an artifact and it isn't already in your repository (because you
installed some RPM that put it there), it will fetch it via HTTP
automatically regardless of whether you have an RPM for it or not.

The result of all this is that you're wasting your time trying to
package plugins and such as RPMs for these products.  People aren't
going to use rpmdrake for this because they are used to doing it a
different way, and you'll end up with an unmaintainable mix of stuff
installed via RPM and stuff installed via whatever.


More information about the Mageia-dev mailing list