On Tue, Nov 19, 2019 at 4:54 PM Stephen John Smoogen <smooge@xxxxxxxxx> wrote:
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.
Couldn't have expressed better what I think !!!
--
Stephen J Smoogen.
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Alexander Kurtakov
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