Draft JEP proposal: JDK-8200758: Packaging Tool

[Martijn Verburg]

Hi Kevin,

Looks good, I assume as part of the work several existing javapackager bugs
will be swept up along the way?  We use javapackager and are very happy
with what it gives us considering it is "free as in beer", but there are
some significant workarounds required for code signing, especially on Mac
OS X.

Sign us (jClarity) up as early testers :-).

Cheers,
Martijn

On 1 June 2018 at 08:53, Alan Bateman <Alan.Bateman at oracle.com> wrote:

> On 31/05/2018 01:10, Kevin Rushforth wrote:
>
>> I would like to propose the following Draft JEP [1] for discussion.
>>
>> JDK-8200758: Packaging Tool
>>
>> This is intended as a JDK-scope replacement for the existing javapackager
>> tool that ships with Oracle JDK 10 (and earlier Oracle JDK releases), and
>> was delivered as part of the JavaFX build. The javapackager tool has been
>> removed from Oracle JDK 11 along with the removal of JavaFX.
>>
>> Comments on this JEP are welcome. It is currently not targeted for a
>> specific release, but we are aiming for JDK 12.
>>
>> -- Kevin
>>
>> [1] https://bugs.openjdk.java.net/browse/JDK-8200758
>>
>> I read through the draft.
>
> The Goals and Non-Goals looks very reasonable.
>
> The Summary includes "self-contained Java Server ... applications" but the
> JEP doesn't say too much about that part. Can we assume it can be started
> and stopped with /etc/init.d or equivalent scripts, logs with the server
> output etc? A general observation is that most of the issues around
> end-user/GUI applications are clearly documented in the draft, the headless
> application environment case less so. It makes me wonder if this JEP should
> be split so that it initially focuses on the former.
>
> I think it would be useful if the JEP explained what an "application" is.
> Is it a JAR file (with a Main-Class) that is deployed on the class path?
> Can it be a module? What about modules and libraries that the application
> uses. Users of javapackager might know these things but readers of the JEP
> may not.
>
> The JEP mentions that JavaFX will be removed in JDK 11. I assume this
> should be clarified so that it's clear it will no longer be shipped in
> Oracle's JDK. It's a none issue for those using OpenJDK builds as the the
> JavaFX modules were never bundled/imported by default.
>
> There are several references to "server JRE" that probably should be
> clarified as this notion does not exist in OpenJDK. It may be that the JEP
> just needs to clearer as to the modules that it links into the run-time
> image.
>
> There are several references to "application launcher" and "native
> launcher". At some point we need to work out some issues with jlink as it
> it will need to generate native launchers too. The JEP could list it as an
> issue as the development of this JEP will at least touch on some of this.
>
> The draft doesn't have a section on testing. If someone is building
> OpenJDK then will they will require additional tools in the build
> environment and can the tests be run without manual interaction? Also how
> about a developer using the tool, will the generated native packages be
> easy to un-install so they can easily test in a local environment?
>
> -Alan
>