[gentoo-dev] Clearing the clutter

[Thomas Osterlie]

Hi,

I'm in the process of upgrading the JBoss ebuild to the latest JBoss
release, and am in need of some advice.

Here's the deal: JBoss comes with a *LOT* of third-party libraries,
which it relies upon to run with the full monty of features.  With the
original JBoss ebuild I just stuffed all of these third party libraries
in the JBoss file hierarchy.  This time around, however, I'm tempted to
write separate ebuilds for each third party library included, and
instead sym linking them on need (I'm working on a tool to handle
library and service dependencies when adding new server archives to
JBoss).

In my eyes having separate ebuilds for the third-party libraries is a
good thing(tm), as more Java applications can share the same libraries.
This could be a start in solving the inherent problem with Java
applications living as separate islands on the file system, independent
of each other.

The consequence of separating the third-party libraries from the JBoss
installation, however, is that we'd see a growth in the number of
ebuilds in dev-java.  JBoss requires around twenty third-party libraries
for its complete functionality.  That is some twenty odd new ebuilds in
dev-java and possibly some in net-www.  I'm unsure whether this will
result in a cluttered dev-java dir.

I'm tempted to start writing separate ebuilds for the third-party libs,
but want to hear if anyone else have opinions on the matter before I
start with the task.

Cheers,

Thomas Osterlie