>The value of a naked gcj-compiled lucene package is limited [...] >because of the GC issues
Are you sure? Do you think a naked gcj-compiled lucene package would be valuable for people creating swig bindings for languages such as OCaml, Perl, PHP[1], etc.? Do you think C application programmers who want to use lucene are better off using CLucene[2] instead of a gcj library? Why did pylucene choose the latter? >gcj compiling a java package is pretty trivial It's not trivial for everyone. I don't currently know how to use gcj to create a shared library. Also, if a naked gcj-compiled lucene library is useful, I can imagine other Debian packages in the future will need it as a dependency. >I can help you with non Debian-specific PyLucene or GCJ issues. What >do you need ? I have almost no gcj experience, and have never worked with a gcj shared library. I need your (Andi) help with the judgement call as to whether this is worthwhile or not. Upsteam wasn't too excited about a naked gcj lucene library, but maybe Doug just wasn't thinking about enabling C programmers and swig programmers. My current feeling is to wait for gcj-3.5 to reach Debian then revisit. I did notice that compiling the lucene demo executables using gcj works great, and I am tempted to ship those right away.[3] >So Jeff what can I do? I already build and install pylucene on several >Debian machines with every new version but it's been a couple of years >since I've made a Debian package. Could you crank one out if I gave you >build instructions and dependencies? I will not crank out a pylucene package myself. I am willing to help you (Jeff) produce the package if you are interested. That means I will answer questions, review the package, and sponsor both it and you into the Debian project. Please look at an existing Debian python package (such as python-medusa) before tackling. There are also good opportunities to improve the java lucene package[4][5] in Debian. It seems very likely to me that java lucene will be a pylucene build dependency in the future. Cheers, Jeff [1] http://www.mail-archive.com/lucene-user%40jakarta.apache.org/msg09552.html [2] http://sourceforge.net/projects/clucene [3] http://www.mail-archive.com/lucene-user@jakarta.apache.org/msg09089.html [4] http://bugs.debian.org/cgi-bin/bugreport.cgi?bug=272295 [5] http://bugs.debian.org/cgi-bin/bugreport.cgi?bug=272301
