Bug#911078: triplea: Fails to start with NullPointerException

[Markus Koschany]

Hello,

On Wed, 7 Aug 2019 08:36:38 -0700 Dan Van Atta <dhvatta at gmail.com> wrote:
> Apologies for the long delay, updates to Debian are a deeper issue than I
> initially realized. TripleA has had a history of maintenance overhead
> problems, seeing the Debian fork has me realize that it is a fork with its
> own unique code and in effect would be a second codebase to maintain. I do
> not think it's sustainable to maintain two code bases as has been done. Of
> note, it's difficult sustaining development in the core codebase itself and
> there's been a lot of effort to improve efficiency there in order to make
> progress in substantially improving the game.

I wouldn't call the Debian packaging of triplea a fork. When I was
packaging the last version for Debian I discovered that you used the
non-free org.json:json artifact with the infamous copyright clause. I
reported it upstream at

https://github.com/triplea-game/triplea/issues/2672

So two patches, JSONException.patch and no-evil-json.patch do merely
exist because of that reason. Since the issue has been already fixed
upstream both patches can be dropped now.

Then we have no-Mac.patch with MacOS specific code which is problematic
with OpenJDK 11 and which didn't work on Debian.

disable-javazoom-audioplayer.patch exists because nobody has packaged
the javazoom audio player.

And last but not least we have the build.patch to work around various
issues with the Gradle build system.

That's not a fork in my opinion but a call for more help in packaging
triple in a Debian compliant way.

> With that said, I think the solution is to try and incorporate the Debian
> patches into the main codebase to the largest extent possible. In that case
> the Debian version could be a clean fork of the main codebase and would
> remove the second maintenance effort. I've opened a tracking issue in the
> Github issue queue to discuss this amongst the TripleA developers and
> greater community: https://github.com/triplea-game/triplea/issues/4933.
> Input and coordination on that effort from the Debian side would be very
> welcome. While I'm not sure if we can make the Debian version a 'true'
> fork, having the main repo and Debian fork mirror as closely as possible
> should reduce redundant maintenance efforts and make this process more
> sustainable.

Including our patches would be greatly appreciated. But as I said some
do merely exist because due to a lack of contributors, some patches can
be dropped and the other ones could be incorporated but it requires some
work. What we would like to do in Debian is just download your release
tarball and create a Debian package without patching at all. :)

Regards,

Markus



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