Currently, I am looking into the problem of providing software packages for different platforms via native packages in a Continuous Integration Environment. The software in question is pure Java, so binary compatibility and/or cross-compilation issue resolves to having a conforming JRE installed on the target-platform.
I know this question is prone for another OSI-10 flame-war on the "Java is the OS" statement - please don't. It is a customer requirement I must conform to. The (non-)intelligence of that requirement might be questioned, but ... Having looked into the issue of cross-platform packaging systems, I have found mostly separate package managers which require to be installed on the target-platform and manage a separate environment (viz OpenPkg, IPS). These do not help, as the customers require native packages. Apparantly, there are tools which take compiled binaries and wrap those into some package-format - EPM and ProjectBuilder do such a thing. The first has it's last commit by December 2010 and the second seems to be a one-man-show, so those (I did not find alternatives) are of questionable value in a long-term productive environment. Other projects manage to provide packages for a multitude of platforms. Are these built (semi-)manually by volunteers or distribution providers or is there any packaging infrastructure available to automate the task of taking sources to compile and package them? As I am talking of Java, a tool which packages binaries would be entirely sufficient. Thanks for any ideas or hints, cheers, -- Christopher J. Ruwe TZ: GMT + 2h
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