/usr/share/java as maven repository?

[Dalibor Topic]

manfred at mosabuam.com wrote:
> I think using Maven with a Debian internal and cleaned up repository  
> that only contains debian compliant packages and the fixes to make the  
> build of any debian package work is the better approach. It is also  
> more useful for the bigger community since this debian repo could be  
> used as a clean minimum repo. Many other public repos are quite a mess  
> with lots of historic rubbish in there (like broken spring packages,  
> wrong and moved groupids and so on).

That's a good goal to strive for in the long run, but currently, I don't 
think that it's possible to meet it. One could, in parallel, work on 
using the setUp tools to generate the POMs for all kinds of libraries
packaged by Debian from Debian's metadata. That could also require 
dealing with Wagon to teach it to read deb files, for example.

But I'd see the two activities as separate, for now, as the immediate 
problem of 'how do we build packages inside Debian within Debian using 
maven 2' is of a lot smaller scope than 'how do we turn the Debian 
achives into a repo useful for general maven2 users'.

I believe solving the latter will require a lot of communication effort, 
for example, between Debian Java packagers, and Maven archive 
maintainers, as it can become a 'power' struggle over whose repo is the 
'default' one for Debian users, etc.

And that kind of potential political problem is best solved by waiting 
it out until we've got some experience solving the more immediate ones. ;)

cheers,
dalibor topic