[OmTdev] debian package

[Tiago S. <tia...@te...>]

Hi!

I'm opening a new thread for debian packaging, it's difficult for me
to follow different subjects in the same message (yes, I was
responsible for it...)

On 26 juin 07, JC wrote:
> > BTW, I would like to integrate the debian packaging I've done with
> > OmegaT project. Necessary files (debian/ directory) could be included
> > in a new CVS module and the .deb package could be made available
> > somewhere else (somebody pointed me that sourceforge does not like
> > storing distro-specific packages). How could this be managed?
> 
> But a .deb is not distro specific :) It is used like a .rpm by a  
> great number of distributions :)

Yes, but like rpm's, you can't suppose that a .deb file will work out
of the box in whatever debian-based distribution.
 
> I am thinking that, just like we seem to have OmegaT distributed with  
> Gentoo:
> packages.gentoo.org/packages/?category=app-text;name=omegat
> 
> without hosting the related code here, maybe a thing to consider  
> would be to get OmegaT into debian so that it is automatically  
> distributed accross a number of .deb based distributions ?
> 
> After all, we don't have the non-free Java issue anymore and it  
> should be much easier to get better acceptation of OmegaT in Debian  
> that way (which is the idea of having a .deb  in the end :)

Yes, this is the final goal ;-)
 
Even if sun's java is going gpl, AFAIK not all of it is released
under this license. At least sun-java6 is still in non-free in
debian. But in fact this is not an issue, since omegat could go in
contrib section (contrib is where free software that depends on
non-free software goes).

There is another issue, that keeps me from taking the next steps on
including OmegaT in debian. In debian, everything must be built from
source in a debian environment. So I would have to remove the required
pre-packaged libraries from omegat (htmlparser and vldocking; I
already removed mrjadapter from the deb, since it is not used under
linux), create debian packages for them and submit them to debian
before OmegaT. But htmlparser is built with maven2, which is not yet
available in debian and is certainly far more difficult to package
then OmegaT, htmlparser and vldocking; it has an intent-to-package bug
opened for two years and no result yet.

Anyway, as soon as maven2 is packaged, I will start packaging
htmlparser and vldocking, and I think it is possible to have OmegaT
included in Lenny (next debian release) or Lenny+1.

Didier wrote:

> >BTW, I would like to integrate the debian packaging I've done with
> >OmegaT project. Necessary files (debian/ directory) could be included
> >in a new CVS module
> 
> How many files are they in debian/ directory?
> How large?
> If it's a few files, small, there's no real need to have a new CVS module.
> A simple directory might do (for the sake of simplicity).

There is no problem for me, but there is a clear debian policy not to
make the debian dir part of the source distribution.

The rationale behind this policy is that debian src packages are
distributed in three parts: a orig.tar.gz, which is the upstream
tarball; a .dsc, the description of the package; and a .diff for the
tarball, which contains all the debian changes. If there is a bug in
the debian package (specially a security bug) any debian devel can
upload a new version to debian's archive with the fix, and then debian
specific parts will be splitted in the source tarball and in debian
diff.

I am not sure if you will understand (I am perhaps a little confusing
;-) ) but I see now you are right. We can put it as a simple directory
but don't put it in the distributed tarball (made with ant dist, IIRC).

Tiago.