tomcat packaging concerns from upstream (was Re: [Fwd: Request to mailing list ubuntu-devel rejected])

[Thierry Carrez]

Colin Watson wrote:
> On Sat, Feb 28, 2009 at 08:41:51PM -0800, THUFIR HAWAT wrote:
>> Attempts to disscuss the following topic:
>>
>> http://article.gmane.org/gmane.comp.jakarta.tomcat.user/172013
>>
>> have been rejected.
>>
>> The tomcat list directs this concern to the ubuntu list, which has in
>> the past only offered the consensus advice of not to use the package
>> manager.  Hence the attempts to post to the devel list.
> 
> tomcat6 seems to be the only version of Tomcat in Ubuntu main, and it
> appears to have been quite extensively repackaged since tomcat5.5. The
> ubuntu-server mailing list would be the best place to discuss this, I
> think; Thierry Carrez and Mathias Gug have been working on it in Ubuntu.
> It seems to address at least some of the concerns in the mailing list
> post above, but I am nothing like an expert on it myself and can only
> point you in the right direction.

Hello Thufir,

My answer on the subject didn't vary much since last time I replied to
you. Debian/Ubuntu Tomcat packages must rebuild from source and try to
follow FHS rules, so they can't just unpack the upstream binary tarball
in a single directory. For more details, please see my previous replies:

https://lists.ubuntu.com/archives/ubuntu-devel/2009-January/027251.html
https://lists.ubuntu.com/archives/ubuntu-devel/2009-February/027326.html

I cannot vouch for the tomcat5.5 package, but for the tomcat6 one I
tried my best to follow FHS and still make sense in a Tomcat perspective
(implementation of CATALINA_BASE/CATALINA_HOME as described in upstream
RUNNING.txt). The Jaunty release improves that by removing a few extra
useless directories. That said, I understand that upstream prefers you
to reproduce problems with their unpacked binary tarball before filing
bugs. Our deployment method can certainly introduce
Ubuntu/Debian-specific bugs.

Regards,

-- 
Thierry Carrez
Ubuntu server team