[kaffe] Build system for kjc / external jars + Jetty/JSP success

[Rob Gonzalez]

Hi guys,

> --- Jim Pick <jim at kaffe.org> wrote:
> > I'm proposing we call it "kaffe-external-jars".  Having only spent 30
> > seconds thinking of the right name for it, I'm open to a less wordy name
> > for the module.  I'd like to avoid checking in binaries.  Instead, we
> > could do something more along the lines of a BSD-style "ports" system,
> > where we'd have scripts that would download the "pristine" source
> > tarballs, and apply patches against them, and build our jar files, which
> > could then be checked into the main Kaffe tree, as needed.
> > 
> > What do people think of that?  I'm open to alternate ideas.
> 
> I like the idea. I think we should somewhere, somehow, be able to build the
> java tools we rely (or will rely on) for creating kaffe using kaffe. You way of
> doing it sounds quite cool, and I liked the approach you used with the libtool
> patches.
> 
> I'm not sure how it will affect kaffe's status in debian though. Didn't they
> have that weird policy that if we used ant anywhere, kaffe would have to be
> removed from debian-free? Or am I just misremembering last year's big licensing
> thread?
> 
> cheers,
> dalibor topic

I did some googling about the licensing issues, and it does seem that if
we ship kaffe with a copy of Ant then we would not be included in
debian-free anymore...the Apache license is not GPL-compatible.  We can
clearly use Ant all we want for developing, we just can't ship a copy with
our software and remain on debian-free.

Alternatively we could include non-essential external jars (such as Ant)
in a separate package not on debian-free.  That way kaffe itself stays on
debian-free but the supplementary package does not.  Of course, then the
users need to snag two packages...


As an aside, it would be awesome to have kaffe.org running on kaffe :)


~~Rob

For the curious, this is from the Debian archives regarding the Apache 1.1
License, which is the one Ant is published under.


http://lists.debian.org/debian-legal/2000/debian-legal-200006/msg00116.html