[Java-gnome-developer] naming and distribution issues

[R. A. R. D. <riv...@ya...>]

Hello.

I'm very new to the project. In fact I'm still in the middle of the
tutorial.

I'm also a recent convert from Windows. I have used Linux from time to
time but now I want to get more involved with it. I have experience
developping applications in Java using Swing as the UI, but I think
GNOME integration is the best option if I want to develop applications
in Java that can be accepted by the Linux community, so that's the main
reason why I'm joining this project.

I'll say here what I have installed, maybe this helps to explain the
rest of this mail.

Arch: Athlon
OS: RedHat Fedora Core 1
Java: Sun J2SDK 1.4.2_02

I want to comment with the rest of the people things that maybe you see
as less important, but I think can help to start:

1. path of the files installed.
Currently the libs are generated in /usr/local/lib. Why it's not
installed in /usr/lib? I know I can change it with an argument to
configure, but isn't /usr/lib more standard? At least I don't have to
export LD_LIBRARY_PATH.
Also the jars are installed in /usr/local/share/java-gnome. I don't
know any standard folder for jars, but gcj installs it's jar in
/usr/share/java. Maybe it's a more logical path.

2. names of libraries
Current lib names are libGNOMEJava, libGTKJava and libGladeJava.
Looking at system libraries naming conventions, specially: libgnome,
libgnome-desktop, libgtk or libglade-gnome I think should be better to
name them libgnome-java, libgtk-java, libglade-java and can continue
with libgnomeprint-java, libgtkhtml-java and hopefully much much more
libs :-). Currently names don't look like the mayority of the installed
libs.

3. distribution format
I think having rpms and other distribution formats, basically for
binary distribution, can help finding testers. For example, when I see
an RPM my first felling is: if anything goes wrong, at least I know an
easy way to uninstall all this. I know that an install method is
included in the current distribution format, but think in new people
who want to find the easy way to begin using the libs. Also I prefer to
download one RPM for binaries and one for sources and documentation. to
have things more organized.
In fact if someone gives me the specs files I can try to build the rpms
for new versions, I don't know jet how to create rpms. It's in my list,
but not near top.

Also I have found some things in the tutorial that I want to comment,
but I think it's better to talk about the tutorial in other mail, when
I finnish reading it.

Hope this helps to make this lib a little little better.

regards,
Rivas.


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