I started a thread[1] on maven-user yesterday to try and understand whether Maven's convenience with binary artifacts extrapolates to convenience working with source
One of the first answers even suggested I should go and see the Debian folks (the FTP master's reputation for keeping binary stuff out is known far and wide) I think this is a gap in what Maven currently offers, but Maven's modular nature also makes it very easy to fill that gap, and it would be interesting to try and do it the Debian way. I just want to understand if I might be duplicating any existing efforts though. Specifically, I was thinking that some kind of Maven plugin could be developed to scan the dependency graphs of projects and, where possible, extract the SCM details from pom.xml manifests and then recursively (a) clone their repositories, (b) branch each repo and remove binary artifacts (junit.jar is a common example) and then (c) try to build those clean branches and push the binary products into a local Maven repository. Presumably, something like this would involve developing a Maven plugin, some automation with a tool like Jenkins, and developing an efficient workflow for manually annotating packages (e.g. where the <scm/> data is missing) Some possible outcomes of this: a) it could provide a framework for automatically generating Debian packages, with something closer to DFSG friendliness than a direct link to a public Maven repo b) it could be used to make a Debian-friendly equivalent of the Eclipse marketplace c) It would also expose any non-free build tools or plugins that are relied upon in the dependency graphs of larger open source Java projects. Has anybody else seen any similar efforts, or relevant tools that may contribute to this, etc? 1. http://mail-archives.apache.org/mod_mbox/maven-users/201305.mbox/%3C518B6934.2010101%40pocock.com.au%3E -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to debian-devel-requ...@lists.debian.org with a subject of "unsubscribe". Trouble? Contact listmas...@lists.debian.org Archive: http://lists.debian.org/518d4dc0.5080...@pocock.com.au
