On Tue, 19 Nov 2019 at 09:17, Gerald Henriksen <ghenriks@xxxxxxxxx> wrote: > > On Mon, 18 Nov 2019 21:08:02 -0800, you wrote: > > >On 11/18/19 7:29 PM, Neal Gompa wrote: > >> I can't speak for everyone, but at least my experience was that it was > >> functionally impossible to discover how to package Java stuff. In a > >> lifetime (and a job) ago, I was much more engaged in the Java > >> ecosystem. Back then, I tried to learn how to package and ship Java > >> stuff in Fedora. But the documentation was (and still is) incredibly > >> poor. I only managed to package one library, and it was not easy for > >> me to figure out how to do it. The amount of effort I expended to do > >> it put me off to doing more in the Java ecosystem. > > > >Maybe I misunderstood the earlier comment. I understand that Java can > >be difficult to package, but I thought Gerald was saying that using > >modules somehow made it easier. > > I have no idea whether modules make it easier or not. > > My point was that the Java SIG collapsed long before the modules > became an issue, so "rebooting" the Java SIG isn't going to change > anything unless those calling for the reboot come up with packagers > for the Java ecosystem. > Let us be clear here.. Java and Fedora have never done well. The original 'Everything must be broken into separate parts and integrated' vs 'the ecosystem bundles everything' was with Java and made anyone working with Java in Fedora grind teeth on either being way behind on some software or not having it all in Fedora. The problem is that work was unmaintainable especially when the entire ecosystem is built around having bundles of software where you only needed 1-2 classes from a specific zip. Then there is a bunch of stuff in these languages where you need to rebuild things in a specific order or multiple times or a dozen other things using tools you need but no one is maintaining. The original SIG was a bunch of hero maintainers who said 'ok I am going to make this happen' and put in a hell of an effort to get a lot of stuff unbundled and integrated. [At the time in I think Fedora 8-10 timeframe, there was a large push by certain people to get rid of all Java from the OS because it could not be properly integrated. ] Over time these hero's burnt out just like the hero's who have maintained perl, php, TeX, Nodejs, and many other stacks have. Modules are basically a last gasp for them to trying to keep this maintainable for the last hero maintainers. They allow for you to spec out a lot of grunt work of building X before Y so you can rebuild Y with X. They allow you to say I needed this thing but I am not maintaining it so I am not shipping it... if someone will take it over I can remove that hidden part but I don't have time to keep this up. It isn't just a matter of trying to build a team to maintain these... it is a lot of work dealing with things volunteer packagers* don't have time for: o) Documenting each package o) Documenting how to break apart X into usable rpm packages o) Writing scripts to try and automate that in the rpmbuild parts o) Deal with the fact that every upstream software is slightly different (aka perl Makefile.pl output is never the same) o) Keep up with the fact that every other upstream release has decided to add N dependencies which are either not in Fedora or not the version in Fedora. Doing this with a team means a lot of time coordinating with each other. That means spending a lot of time in meetings with each other or ending getting burnt too many times with Packager B updating Y which breaks your Z. [Modular streams are supposed to help you on this.. but it just makes it a combinatoric headache you have to deal with even more meetings to keep from happening.] Most volunteers don't like meetings, and they usually don't have time for them.. so we end up with a very fractured space. Most of the problems we are seeing with modules are from fractures already there but only shown when FTBFS happened in the past. * I am going to be very clear here. Even if Red Hat pays someone a salary, most of our work on Fedora is volunteer time. Our main job is probably only related to the packages we put in by the fact we need it to complete said job. We usually don't have time to much more than people who have weekends on something. -- Stephen J Smoogen. _______________________________________________ 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
