Hi,

there's also another kind of user with different expectations to the
classpath. I'm new to the world of java and I'm kind of shocked, how binary
jar files are thrown around and nobody cares, what they contain and where they
came from.
When I package a software for Debian, the users of Debian expect me to check
the license and the security of the software. So I can not simply take
whatever jar file I find in the lib/ folder.

So when I develop java software, I prefer to ignore the jars in the lib/
folder and try to satisfy the dependencies with the jar files from the Debian
distribution. Those are located in /usr/share/java and often have slightly
different names then the original jars.

But let us take our time, since Java is free only since 2006, there is still a
long way, until free software developers and the java world understand each
others.

Best regards,

Thomas Koch, http://www.koch.ro

Hi Thomas,
first of all, thank you for sharing your opinions (I followed your
recent problems with JSON, for example :-)).

I fully understand your troubles.

I use Ubuntu (and therefore part of Debian). Thank you for all the
good stuff you (your Thomas and the community) are doing.

But, for Java artifacts, I prefer to follow other approaches which
allow me to have more (or a different type of) control on dependencies.

There are different "best practices", for example:

  - http://repo1.maven.org/maven2/
  - https://repository.apache.org/content/repositories/

I think that all the effort and approaches to provide users and
developers an automated and painless experience are valuable, but
I prefer to use solutions which would work no matter what the
operating system it is (Windows, UNIX/Linux, Mac OS X).

I use Maven or Ant+Ivy or Ant+Maven.

Paolo

Thomas Koch wrote:
> Hi,
>
> there's also another kind of user with different expectations to the
> classpath. I'm new to the world of java and I'm kind of shocked, how binary
> jar files are thrown around and nobody cares, what they contain and where they
> came from.
> When I package a software for Debian, the users of Debian expect me to check
> the license and the security of the software. So I can not simply take
> whatever jar file I find in the lib/ folder.
>
> So when I develop java software, I prefer to ignore the jars in the lib/
> folder and try to satisfy the dependencies with the jar files from the Debian
> distribution. Those are located in /usr/share/java and often have slightly
> different names then the original jars.
>
> But let us take our time, since Java is free only since 2006, there is still a
> long way, until free software developers and the java world understand each
> others.
>
> Best regards,
>
> Thomas Koch, http://www.koch.ro