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Jerônimo Backes wrote: |
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> Can someone answer that, please? |
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> |
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> Netbeans 5 was released 3 or 4 months ago, and yet it is still not |
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> available to install trough portage (the same for Netbeans 4.5, that |
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> never appeared into portage, even 1 year after its release) |
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> |
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> Is there some reason for this? |
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|
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Funny you should mention this. We've been in contact with Roman Strobl |
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from Sun lately, who's been very anxious about us making NetBeans 5.0 |
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available in Portage. |
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|
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What Greg says about the freeze and our state of being understaffed is |
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of course correct, and are the main reasons. |
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|
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There is another, however, that makes us downprioritize NetBeans: it has |
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a lot of painful dependencies. If you look at the dependency graph of |
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NetBeans 4.1, you will see that it depends on JMX, JAF, JavaMail, JIMI |
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and a few other packages that we cannot package properly, because we |
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don't have a redistribution license. |
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|
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This means that in order to install NetBeans, a user needs to manually |
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download about six different packages from the Sun website *and* |
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register hirself (JMX requires registration). This is very painful. |
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|
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What's more painful is that the upstream availability of these packages |
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changes; now and again, the files are replaced and old versions are no |
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longer downloadable. Even worse, the binary content of the file may |
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change, but the filename stays the same. This kills our md5sum verification. |
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|
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For these reasons, we simply cannot afford to spend the time maintaining |
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the package properly -- maintenance of the dependencies is the killer -- |
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and that's also why NetBeans 4.0 and 4.1 are only in ~arch. |
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|
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Now the good news: Sun has recently relicensed everything we need to |
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package this properly, except JavaHelp and JMX. I have on good authority |
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that they're trying to liberate JavaHelp, and possibly also JMX. If so, |
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NetBeans 5.0 will be nicely packaged and moved into stable as soon as |
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our 1.5 migration is over. |
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|
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|
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Also: If you have a particular interest in helping out with NetBeans |
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5.0, please say so, and you can start testing/hacking on our current 5.0 |
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ebuild that's in our experimental overlay. |
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|
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-- Karl T |
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-- |
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