[Java-gnome-developer] (Hacked) version of 4.0.13 in Maven repo

[Jacek F. <ja...@gm...>]

I wanted to try to deploy Java-GNOME 4.0.13 in a Maven repo, so that it
could be easily used in Maven-based projects.

It turned out to be far more complicated than I thought, due to the native
library issues.
In particular, the way Plumbing.loadNativeCode() works on startup.
It works well when Java-GNOME is installed a system lib, but not well when
it's a Maven lib in a local Maven repository.

I found this interesting blog entry on how to Mavenize JARs with embedded
JNI libraries in them:
http://docs.codehaus.org/display/MAVENUSER/Projects+With+JNI

I added the dependency on the utility mentioned in this entry and modified
loadNativeCode() to attempt loading the .so
directly from the jar's META-INF/lib (which is how I deploy it in the Maven
repo).

        //attempt to load from JAR
        try {
         NativeLoader.loadLibrary("gtkjni-" + getVersion());
         return;
        } catch (Throwable ex) {
         System.out.println("Failed to load from JAR: " + ex.getMessage());
         //ignore
        }

It works perfectly, but it is unfortunately a fork of the current logic.
However, this makes it very easy to use in maven projects, just add this to
your pom.xml:

My Maven repo:

<repositories>
        <repository>
                <id>javabuilders</id>
                <url>http://javabuilders.googlecode.com/svn/repo</url>
        </repository>
</repositories>

The Java-GNOME dependency:

  <dependencies>
    <dependency>
      <groupId>org.gnome</groupId>
      <artifactId>java-gnome-linux-x86</artifactId>
      <version>4.0.13</version>
    </dependency>
  </dependencies>

That's all. Now you can just create Java-GNOME on Linux x86 apps and since
the .so is embedded directly in the JAR itself it loads transparently.

The Maven project I use to deploy it is in my github repo:
http://github.com/jacek99/java-gnome-maven

Obviously, this is an experiment, but it seems to work very well and makes
it easy to create Java-GNOME apps by removing the complications
related to the native shared library. Theoretically, we could even embed
copies of it for all platforms (sort of a fat binary) and then intelligently
load the one we need based on the current platform.

I look forward to any feedback from the community: love it, hate it, etc.

Cheers,
Jacek