/usr/share/java as maven repository?

[Dalibor Topic]

Arnaud Vandyck wrote:
> Many thanks for the clarifications.
>
> So if we are talking about refactoring /usr/share/java, let's do it in
> some sort of Debian way. We'll write a wrapper around different build
> system to let them understand our layout. (is it what you meant?)
>   
I hope that wrapping the build systems themselves won't be necessary.

It may be easier to 'setUp' and 'tearDown' virtual repositories based on 
our own binaries in
/usr/share/java and automatically generated metadata from debian's 
metadata about the packages
using some kind of a debhelper_maven script or something like that.

I'd imagine something like this:
1. for the package build, you'd call debhelper_maven
2. (setUp) it would look at the dependency information of the package, 
and for each dependency generate a POM file on the fly from the debian 
package metadata,
3. (build) then call maven with the freshly generated pom repository to 
do its build work,
4. (tearDown) then tear down the POM repository, i.e. remove POMs, 
unregister them from Maven, etc.

Replace maven & POM above with a different system, but the steps would 
be virtually the same.

Pros:
* builds are reproducible & consistent within the Debian system
* Debian's metadata is used throughout the build system, i.e. no 
metadata skew
* could be separated from user's own build system repository, so no 
'your jars are messing with my jars' conflicts

Cons:
* someone would need to implement it and see if the pros actually hold. :)

cheers,
dalibor topic