Debian packages of (scientific) Java libraries

[Florian Rothmaier]

Dear Debian Science Maintainers,

I work on an astronomy project called "Virtual Observatory" (VO) at the 
University of Heidelberg. In our working group, we had the idea to start 
Debian-packaging of VO-related software widespreadly used by 
professional and amateur astronomers.

By creating Debian packages for VO-related libraries and applications, 
we aim at facilitating the installation and maintenance of VO clients on 
Debian(-derived) systems and the distribution of astronomical software 
and its dependencies within the open-source community.

One of our projects is the dpkging of the graphical viewer and data 
editor TOPCAT, see
http://www.star.bris.ac.uk/~mbt/topcat/ .

When I started my packaging work, I had to note that a large number of 
external libs required by TOPCAT comes along in .jar archives. 
Fortunately, some of them have already been packaged (e.g. 
libdomj4-java, libjetty-java or libjfreechart-java), others haven't. I 
understood that I would have to focus on the prerequisites for packaging 
TOPCAT, i.e. on generating local Debian packages for TOPCAT's dependencies.

Right now, I have ~10 Debian packages of Java libraries ready, so far 
only available on my local machine.
I would be very grateful for any hint or suggestion on the best way I 
should proceed with my astronomy packaging project.

Thanks in advance and best regards,
Florian