Re: [platform-swt-dev] gtk port

[Havoc Pennington <hp@xxxxxxxxxx>]

Hi,

Thanks for the help, it's hard to get started on large codebases
without assistance.

I read over the SWT articles on the web site today, and am dusting
off my Java books.

"James Moody/OTT/OTI" <James_Moody@xxxxxxx> writes:
> 
> Well, we have some tools here at OTI which produce the ZIP files
> that you see on the download pages automatically. I don't know in
> what state they are, and I don't know if they're in the repository
> (i.e. if they're open source). They're command-line driven, and I'm
> sure they could be modified to output .RPMs (your favourite) or
> .DEBs (my favourite). :-)
>

If these could be made available at some point, it would be very
helpful to us at Red Hat at least - without the "source + script =
binary" setup it's unclear how we could provide patches not present in
a release from eclipse.org, which is important from a release process
standpoint. (Of course we submit patches upstream as well, but we need
to be able to get a patch into a package on a controlled schedule, and
without bringing in other unrelated changes entailed by a new upstream
version.)

> [By the way, as you've noticed the GTK+ port isn't currently in the
> open source repository. Stay tuned and someone more knowledgable
> and powerful than I will inform you further].

Sounds good. I'm curious to see how some of the mappings from
SWT<->GTK were done.
 
> The idea of building linux packages in a form other than .tar.gz is
> interesting, because the current usage model is that the eclipse/ contents
> is personal, i.e. I unzip eclipse in my home directory and away I go. That
> doesn't mean is HAS to be, since obviously the workbench and plugins
> can be in some root-accessible place as long as my workspace is
> in my home directory. All I mean is that I'm not what the current story
> is for the distribution of a system-wide eclipse for common use. In that
> scenario, where do the plugins go that I want to use myself? Does 
> root have to install them for me? But this is for someone else to worry
> about...

Should be fairly easy to address, but you're right, RPM/deb packaging is
tricky until it has been addressed.

Havoc