[pylucene-dev] Re: PyLucence Debian Package

[Matthew O'Connor]

Jeff Breidenbach [breidenbach at gmail.com] said:

> Given Andi's comments, one possibility is to put the PyLucene package
> into Debian, but under the contrib section and marking it with appropriate
> bug entries. The hope would be people could improve the build situation
> over time.

Personally, I'm fine with it going into contrib.  I'd like
it to go into main but that's probably not feasible unless
there's a DFSG-free JDK that could compile it.

> Another possibility - maybe - is to package an older version of PyLucene
> that depends on Java Lucene 1.4.3. However, I suspect there are likely
> to be similar issues and an upatched Java Lucene 1.4.3 will not be a viable
> build dependency either.

Andi, correct me if I am wrong, but I believe PyLucene has
always required patches to Lucene's source code.  This is
the impression I get from the README:

    http://svn.osafoundation.org/pylucene/trunk/README

> A third possibility is to simply wait and hope the situation gets better.
> Since both Java Lucene 1.9 and PyLucene have an rc in their version
> numbers, this is not a completely crazy idea. On the other hand, it
> may be a really long wait.

We could wait until Lucene 1.9 is official, that'd be fine.
However, I don't expect that will change things much since
it's my understanding that the issues are mostly with GCJ.
Is that right Andi?

Andi would know better if waiting for GCJ to mature is a
good idea.  In Sept. 2004 Andi seemed to be mildly
optimistic that gcj 3.5.0 would eliminate the need for
patches.  See the bottom half of:

    http://bugs.debian.org/cgi-bin/bugreport.cgi?bug=256283#msg25

However, that doesn't seem to have panned out.  See this
email:

    http://lists.osafoundation.org/pipermail/pylucene-dev/2006-February/000815.html

(I'm assuming here gcc 3.5 is more or less the same as gcc 4.0).

> A fourth possibility is to modify the Debian PyLucene package such
> that it first builds the patched Java Lucene .jar from .java files. That's
> kind of  messy, and redundant, but may not have any blockers.

Let me see if I have this suggestion right.  The pylucene
source package would include a patched fork of the Lucene
code.  Those sources get compiled with Java Lucene's Ant
build using a regular 1.4.2 JDK.  This produces a .class
file that we then compile with GCJ.  

If that's right then that sounds fine to me.  However, if I
understand Debian Policy right, that'd would almost
certainly mean it'd have to go in contrib.  Which, as I
said, is fine with me.

...

So I'm a little vague on where to go from here.  In my
opinion your fourth option is the best.  If you think it's
wise, I could back off and package the PyLucene 1.0.1 tree
which is based on the Lucene 1.4.3 sources.  That'd
side-step the fact that 1.9 is still a release candidate.
What do you say?

Thanks for taking time to look over the package and give
your comments!

-matthew