Packaging Advice (SB-MASE)

[Paul McEnery]

I'm looking for some advice on how best to package a particular Java
application. The application in question is SB-MASE
(http://sourceforge.net/projects/sbmase/).

The package is provided with a "classes" directory with a "start.bat"
file which runs java pointing to the Main class. The package also
contains a "src" directory with all of the source which I am able to
build using openjdk. There are two areas where I need some help.

1. Images and icons.
The application uses images which are simply in an "images" directory
relative to the current working directory. Should I try and JAR-ify
the images or should I simply put them in /usr/share/sb-mase/images?
Either way I think I am going to need to patch the source to point to
this location. Is any one of these methods (jar or structure in
/usr/share) preferred?

2. Configuration (including serialized objects!)
The application reads some configuration on startup from
"config"/*.dat (relative path). What should I do about this? If I put
them in /etc/sb-mase/ I will need to (a) patch the application, (b)
introduce some sort of group permissions to allow users to be able to
write to this directory. Or, should I be trying to do something that
allows /etc/sb-mase/*.dat to be read if ~/.sb-mase/* does not exist?
Since many of these .dat files are Serialized objects... should I
rather put the "config" directory in /usr/share/sb-mase/ (which is
just used on first startup)? Either way... some patching is going to
be required - which I am happy to undertake.

I would appreciate it if someone could take a look at the original
source package and make a couple of recommendations.

Many thanks,

Paul.