On Wed, Jul 28, 2021 at 08:41:46AM +0200, Emmanuel Bourg wrote: > Hi Peymaneh, > > Le 2021-07-27 10:09, Peymaneh Nejad a écrit : > > > Is it intended or wished for that additional runtimes other than Java > > are packaged in seperate source packages > > Yes it is, for several reasons: > - The Java Team doesn't have the time and skills to maintain properly a > multi-language package like ANTLR. The Java part is sufficiently complex on > its own, we'd rather not have to care about the other languages. > - Different language ecosystems often require distinct and slightly > incompatible versions of ANTLR. > - Handling several languages in the same package makes upgrades and > regression testing much more difficult. > - ANTLR is a core package of the Java ecosystems, including more languages > increases the dependency tree of the Java packages and makes the > bootstrapping harder. > > So it's preferable to have a clear separation of responsability with > different source packages, each language team having the freedom to maintain > its version as needed without impacting the others.
I don't disagree with Emmanuel's statements about the importance of ANTLR and why it is helpful to maintain separation. However, I don't think introducing a separate source package each language ecosystem is necessarily best for Debian. It causes additional work for the Security team when in the event there vulnerabilities. It potentially confuses users (and Debian developers) by creating a distinction that does not exist upstream. It also means that we will release with different versions of ANTLR for different languages, which feels very "non-distro" to me. (What happens if the version of the ANTLR parser for language X is subtly incompatible with language Y, and a user runs a system on Debian that requires both bindings?) tony
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