Re: [swarm-hackers] Swarm in debian/ubuntu

[Paul Johnson]

Scott Christley wrote:
> On Sep 29, 2008, at 12:52 PM, Paul Johnson wrote:
> 
>> Scott Christley wrote:
>>> On Sep 25, 2008, at 12:57 PM, Paul Johnson wrote:
>>>
>>>> I'm curious to know if you will want to call your package "libswarm"
>>>> rather than "swarm".
>>> Didn't think about it until you mentioned it, was thinking just
>>> "swarm" but there does seem a convention to use "lib" when its a
>>> library.  Looking further though we might want to consider different
>>> Swarm variations, especially considering the different GUIs and such,
>>> for example:
>>>
>>> swarm-core
>>> swarm-tcl/tk/blt
>>> swarm-gnustep
>>> swarm-java
>>>
>> Until now, we've had RPMs for
>> 1. swarm 0bjective C
>> 2. optional JDK addon
>> 3. optional gcc-java addon
>>
>> This has not been entirely happy because the precise version of the  
>> JDK
>> must be specified, and that caused trouble where some people wanted to
>> use Sun JDK, others Kaffe, others Blackdown whatever...
>>
>> If that perception (guess) was accurate, it makes me think we should  
>> not
>> provide a swarm-core at all, but rather we should aim to give each  
>> user
>> just one big package, one for Swarm-Objective C (if possible, it  
>> should
>> support all possible GUI), one for Swarm-Java.
> 
> My main reason for not including everything is because then it creates  
> a lot of dependencies: tcl/tk/blt, gnustep, java, etc. which might not  
> all be needed, and I guess will be a problem for some distributions as  
> not all of these are available, e.g. gnustep hasn't been packaged yet  
> for Fedora.

All good points.

> 
> The Swarm configuration currently cannot build all of these together  
> in one-shot, need to do separate configure-build steps.  This could be  
> changed but I think we might need to resolve the current GUI conflicts  
> (i.e. differing interfaces) before that would work well.
> 
> Why is the precise version of the JDK needed?  Is this a packaging  
> issue or something internal to Swarm?
> 

The configure statement wants an explicit path like /usr/lib/java/JDK1.6
or something.  It has to find the files it wants.  A user can create a
symbolic link and refer to that, but the problem still remains that the
user is required to "do something".  If the /etc/alternatives framework
that they are using in Ubuntu and Fedora offered a way for Swarm to find
header/devel files, that would solve the problem. But to me, the
alternatives system is just a muddy morass of symbolic links that is
maintained in a helter skelter way by whatever program gets instaled.

PJ


> Scott
> 



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Paul E. Johnson                       email: address@hidden
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