Re: Complicated re-distribution of pgjdbc the "open source way"

[ My last upload was around 2007, so I suggest to approach the Debian Java
Maintainers <pkg-java-maintainers(at)lists(dot)alioth(dot)debian(dot)org>, however this is a
public list, only CCing one maintainer ]

On 07.03.2016 15:26, Pavel Raiskup wrote:
> Hi all,
>
> --
> I'm taking the liberty of CCing all pgjdbc packagers I'm aware of (please
> opt-out if you don't care and sorry for rush). I just want to see whether
> we in Fedora are thinking a constructive way. This is not GNU/Linux
> oriented effort, but it is rather about any open source
> packagers/distributors, feel free to add anybody who might be interested
> in the loop.
> --
>
> _Open_ distribution¹ of pgjdbc is becoming a bit painful for the last
> several releases, mostly because there are some non-free/windows-only
> related _hard_-dependencies (currently osgi.enterprise, waffle-jna) which
> disallow us to build pgjdbc on free distro.
>
> The preferred way would be to solve this upstream (making the dependencies
> optional), but it is not a mandate of pgjdbc upstream to cooperate on this
> -- even patches from us to support pure open source build are not wanted.
> As upstream is not interested in non-maven builds, it will be most
> probably even worse later.
>
> We've done some small observation around GNU/Linux packages, and it seems
> we all reinvent the very similar patches or hacks over and over again.
>
> Because PostgreSQL connector is important part of operating system, we are
> thinking about a small friendly fork of pgjdbc, called pgjdbc-foss. This
> should allow us to solve the issue rather sooner than later.
>
> That project idea:
>
> * we should provide an _easy to use_ (documented how to build from
> source) version-ed tarball, compatible with pgjdbc
>
> * this tarball would be FOSS source-only, with FOSS dependencies,
> (non-free deps could be possible in future, but only as opt-in
> feature)
>
> * the build would be 1-step process (no need to build pgjdbc-parent-poms
> first, and others), with some obvious system dependencies
>
> * that tarball would allow us to 100% build-from-source _without_ tweaks
>
> * build from this tarball must not rely on maven repositories --
> untrusted content at distribution level
>
> * the testsuite should be fixed to allow us to run it easily under
> non-root user, on a local/cloud build-box
>
> Would you be interested in having one common code-base for
> open-source-distribution-model of pgjdbc, and optionally (preferably)
> cooperate? That source should be as close as possible to pgjdbc, just
> limited limited set of patches to allow us to build/test/distribute
> correctly and what is more important we could do the job _consistently_
> with a lot _less_ packagers effort.
>
> Just let me know if this is good/bad idea from your packackar's POV. Some
> links for discussion with upstream about issues [1,..N].
>
> ¹ By that I mean ability to build from FOSS source, _against_
> FOSS source dependencies. By FOSS source I mean software which
> _anybody_ can read, study, copy, modify, distribute.
>
> [1] http://www.postgresql.org/message-id/1831842355.39585708.1455624950515.JavaMail.zimbra@redhat.com
> [2] http://www.postgresql.org/message-id/2113338928.20942725.1448530160996.JavaMail.zimbra@redhat.com
> [3] http://www.postgresql.org/message-id/5479464.pnS2mdyLUu@nb.usersys.redhat.com
> [4] http://www.postgresql.org/message-id/2217774.p6G2ev8LQ6@nb.usersys.redhat.com
>
> Pavel
>