----- Original Message ----- > From: "Gerald Henriksen" <ghenriks@xxxxxxxxx> > To: "Development discussions related to Fedora" <devel@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx> > Sent: Monday, November 18, 2019 6:40:54 PM > Subject: Re: [fedora-java] What's the State of the Java SIG? > > On Mon, 18 Nov 2019 13:37:39 +0100, you wrote: > > >Fabio Valentini wrote: > >> Or is it time for a "tabula rasa" and restart the SIG? > > > >IMHO, yes. Kick out the 1 or 2 Modularity fundamentalists that form the > >current remains of the Java SIG and create a new Java SIG from scratch that > >actually cares about packaging Java properly in and for (non-modular) > >Fedora. > > Great, you eliminate the remaining members of the Java SIG (those who > didn't go running away because forcing Java stuff into RPMs was too > painful). > > Now where are you going to get new members to create this new Java > SIG? > > I mean, the Java SIG isn't forcing Java packagers to use Modularity, > so that isn't why the Java SIG is dying. For historical context... Without Ursa Prime/Major/whatever we're calling it now, that's where we've been for the last... n > 6 months. If you depended on Ant, Maven, or any of the minor libraries they've modularized and put in their default module stream, the Java SIG's (un)official(?) policy was to have you modularize. Because that was the only way to use these packages! And if your runtime dependencies are in javapackages-tools? Good luck! You have to rebuild them inside your own module! It has entirely been the efforts of the Stewardship SIG to enable ursine users. We've done that by continuing to packaging many of the libraries that the Java SIG has either dropped entirely or made modular-only. For the last n > 6 months, packages such as LibreOffice and Dogtag have continued building only because we keep maintaining these packages as ursine. We did this in part to keep our own packages building and in part because we don't believe modular packages are a real answer to maintainership problems. Purely speculation on my part, but part of what likely caused the Java SIG to effectively dissolve was because each maintainer was an island, a hero. They maintained all their packages on their own; there is no "Java SIG" FAS packaging group. As Mikolaj has said, the meetings stopped, the mails stopped. People probably just quit working together. Part of what we've tried to do differently in the Stewardship SIG is encourage community and peer support. We're a FAS group and all our packages are owned by the collective group. We maintain public lists of what's in need of review [0], what we maintain [1], what we're looking for updates on [2], and what we're in the process of doing [3]. Anyone is free to contribute to the Stewardship SIG too! Fabio does a lot of work, and we're deeply thankful for that! But a few of us double check his work, help out on minimizing package dependencies as we get time, catch CVE updates, and perform rebases too. We're always looking for more members, and if you're interested in joining, just shoot a mail! Now, I do want to point out there are two faces to the Java SIG. There's the set of maintainers who maintain the soft underbelly of Java libraries. That's mostly Mikolaj now. People like gil and others, while at one point large Java package maintainers, have since moved on and their packages have been orphaned through the unresponsive maintainer process. I think the Eclipse team is part of that too. But it did seem rather uncoordinated, from the outside, the whole ant+maven causing Eclipse to modularize dance. But there's also the quiet maintainers of the JVM itself, who we're all grateful for their quiet work. They've not tried to modularize as far as I can tell. For all their hard work, we're thankful! We, the Stewardship SIG, have said before that if you need packages maintained that we're about to orphan, tell us! We'd keep them around and do our best to update them. We try not to orphan everything we have, we announce on the list and cc dependent package maintainers, and generally try to be good stewards of the community. We had offered in the past, on the list, to help Eclipse maintain whatever packages they needed to stay ursine, but that offer went unanswered. And if your application is major or critical to Fedora, like LibreOffice, Dogtag, or even Eclipse are, we'd be consider taking on new packages and maintaining them too, if they benefit the community. However, without new members and more time on our hands, I'm not sure how longer we'll be able to continue. Being brutally honest, Fabio does a LOT of work. We need a long term solution that doesn't leave all our ursine packages broken. Regardless of whether they're part of Fedora, existing only hidden, private networks of universities and corporations, or lurking in someone's COPR. - Alex [0]: https://decathorpe.fedorapeople.org/stewardship-sig-prs.html [1]: https://decathorpe.fedorapeople.org/stewardship-sig.html [2]: https://decathorpe.fedorapeople.org/stewardship-sig-stats.html [3]: https://pagure.io/stewardship-sig/issues > > The only reason modularity is an issue is because no one else wants to > maintain Java packages in the first place. > > _______________________________________________ > devel mailing list -- devel@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx > To unsubscribe send an email to devel-leave@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx > Fedora Code of Conduct: > https://docs.fedoraproject.org/en-US/project/code-of-conduct/ > List Guidelines: https://fedoraproject.org/wiki/Mailing_list_guidelines > List Archives: > https://lists.fedoraproject.org/archives/list/devel@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx > _______________________________________________ devel mailing list -- devel@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx To unsubscribe send an email to devel-leave@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx Fedora Code of Conduct: https://docs.fedoraproject.org/en-US/project/code-of-conduct/ List Guidelines: https://fedoraproject.org/wiki/Mailing_list_guidelines List Archives: https://lists.fedoraproject.org/archives/list/devel@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
