Hi Fabrizio This is more like the kind of critique the space needs. I had not considered the continuing difficulties with OpenJDK's incompatible modules but it makes sense that this would be a high friction issue. I wonder if we might be able to get you to come on and talk about this on the show and what might be done? Certainly if this issue is a technical barrier to more java desktop applications being written on Linux, we should definitely shine a light on the problems. It's high time we talked about BlueMarine in more depth anyway, and I think with the angle of the issues of porting such an application to OpenJDK, it should be a very interesting interview.
Let me know if you are interested. Thanks. Dick On Jul 27, 4:00 am, Fabrizio Giudici <fabrizio.giud...@tidalwave.it> wrote: > Changing the subject as the other thread is going in a different > direction.... > > Dick Wall wrote: > > In the discussion I did in fact call out that I am surprised that a > > couple of years on from Java being open sourced, there are not more > > Java desktop apps. The examples we gave show that Java can be used > > successfully for writing desktop applications, but in the episode I > > actually say that I am disappointed there are not more. That's a big > > Well, you know I'm a write of a Java desktop application that is > supposed to have some significance in Linux, once it gets to a stable > and reasonably complete stage. The development has got some troubles in > the past year - it went on, but my Hudson server exploded with the > number of tests, with the result that I couldn't make the CI good > practices to work for several months. So, I wasn't able to push official > releases, as I couldn't run a full QA suite. Now that I am able to spawn > Hudson slaves, I'm going to have all my projects back to good CI - still > need a few days to complete also some other transitions in the software > factory. > > So, the main problem is related to specific issues from me. But the > biggest QA problems I had - and that ultimately led to an explosion of > the number of tests - is specifically Linux. blueMarine tends to run > well in Linux Ubuntu with the Sun Java machine. At this month of the > past year I was naive enough to believe that to have it running on > OpenJDK would have been a breeze. Indeed it wasn't, as the two things > are different enough to require extensive testing for both (and also > cosinder that the imaging in Java is one of the things where WORA is > mostly broken). But this is not yet the problem - after all I could > quality blueMarine on Linux only with the OpenJDK. The problem is that > the OpenJDK is furthermore different in Fedora and other distros. What > at October of the past year used to work with Linux + OpenJDK didn't > with Fedora. I had to set up another test environment for Fedora, but > this led me to the impossibility of running QA tests with the necessary > frequency on all systems - I can have multiple distros in my lab at > home, but not when I'm travelling for my business; and I can't have the > things running on my laptop with in a virtualised environment because > they take several hours and would prevent me from working on other things. > > There's also some poor management from me, because I promised to my beta > testers that the next release would run flawlessly at least on Ubuntu + > Fedora, while I could have been more prudent on my promises. This is > basically preventing the next release of blueMarine from coming out and > the only solution I see is to use Amazon EC2 or Sun Cloud for running in > virtual boxes in the cloud (*). Unfortunately, I'm not able yet to > handle EC2 (still studying it) and Sun Cloud, which on the paper should > be simpler to use, doesn't exist yet. > > I reckon that my case is unfortunate, as when you deal with imaging > tests are much heavier than the average - however, my current position > is that most of (honestly, not all) my troubles for releasing a desktop > app to Linux is due to Linux, specifically the fact that OpenJDKsuffers > from the usual suicide attitude of the Linux world to fragmentate. > > (*) Hoping that won't cost me a fortune, which is one of my fears... > > -- > Fabrizio Giudici - Java Architect, Project Manager > Tidalwave s.a.s. - "We make Java work. Everywhere." > weblogs.java.net/blog/fabriziogiudici -www.tidalwave.it/blog > fabrizio.giud...@tidalwave.it - mobile: +39 348.150.6941 --~--~---------~--~----~------------~-------~--~----~ You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "The Java Posse" group. To post to this group, send email to javaposse@googlegroups.com To unsubscribe from this group, send email to javaposse+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/javaposse?hl=en -~----------~----~----~----~------~----~------~--~---
