[gentoo-dev] Problems creating a ebuild for a package written in JAVA.

[Dan Naumov]

Hello.

I long ago wanted to create an ebuild for some good SETI@home client watcher seeing as there weren't any in in the portage tree. After failing to create an ebuild for KSetiWatch (bizarre crash problems after compile), I've decided to attemp packaging JSETIMon (which can be found at: http://jsetimon.sourceforge.net) and ran into a few problems.

There are 2 avaible downloads, the source tarball and a .jar file that can be run with "java -jar JSETIMon-1.32.jar" upon download. For convinience, I decided to rather go ahead with using the .jar now here are the problems:

1) since the *.jar file cannot be run by itself, I guess I'll have to create a shell script that would be placed into /usr/bin and upon being run, would run "java -jar /path/to/JSETIMon-1.32.jar" The problem is, what would be a "sane" place to put the .jar file in ?

2) JSETIMon creates 2 configuration files upon being run, jsetimon.ini and sound.ini, the problem is, they're created in the directory you run the program in. Ie. if a user does "cd /usr/bin/;./jsetimon", where "jsetimon" would be the script created for running the program, JSETIMon will attemp to create it's config files under /usr/bin :( Not only that, but if you put that "jsetimon" script into say...a fluxbox menu, the files would get created under the users home directory and would remain visible, as their filenames don't start with a period.

The only way that makes the program work "sanely" is to create some subdirectory under the user's homedir, put the .jar there and make the user use something like "cd /SETI;java -jar JSETIMon-1.32.jar" in the menu for starting up the program. Personally, I don't know how would I go around this, since all this seems very very broken and I see no convinient way of simply installing the program using "emerge jsetimon".

The situation is rather unfortunate, seeing as there is nothing seti-related in the portage tree and the only 2 good seti watchers (that can track multiple clients) avaible for Linux. These 2 programs are KSetiWatch (bizarre crashes) and JSETIMon (horrible installation procedure).

Any ideas on what would be the best way to make all this easy for the end-user ? Should I try contacting the author and making him change a few things in the program (for example making the config filenames start with a period). How should I (and other ebuild writers for that matter) handle the installation of JAVA programs ?

Thank you for your time and help.

Sincerely,
Dan naumov (aka Jago on OPN)