javapackager feedback and questions

[victor.drozdov at oracle.com]

Hi, Mani.

Thanks for providing the feedback!
We will consider adding more examples and more details in the docs as 
you proposed(there is an arg named jvmOptions but that's not mentioned 
in the table).
Looks like there is a bug when you specify systemWide=true on the MacOSX 
in non-gui mode. Can you provide more details about that (like full cmd 
line)?
Actually, if you want you can clone the repo:
http://hg.openjdk.java.net/openjfx/10-dev/rt/
(hg clone http://hg.openjdk.java.net/openjfx/10-dev/rt/)
and help to improve javapackager. Or you can just create Enhancements 
for deploy/packager, as it's not always clear what users expect.

By the way, what kind of apps you distribute using javapackager? Is that 
a UI app or services?

--Victor


On 11/29/17 3:48 AM, Mani Sarkar wrote:
> Hi all,
>
> First I hope I'm writing to the correct mailing list, if not please suggest
> where to write instead. Also if it is worth writing back as separate
> messages per issue or item, please do let me know.
>
> Some of my observations and feedback when using *javapackager*:
>
> *Positives*
> - .dmg and .msi packaging work very well out of the box, easy to put
> together configuration settings
> - .rpm packages build very quickly
> - a number of features from FPM (docs
> <https://fpm.readthedocs.io/en/latest/> | GitHub
> <https://github.com/jordansissel/fpm>) available but some more for the
> individual types of packages would certainly help (for e.g. exposing some
> more of the CLI flags for DEB and RPM packaging)
>
> *Improvements*
> - [doc and example required]: Additional documentation and examples around
> how to add a license when building a package would be helpful. After a bit
> of searching on google and experimenting with couple of combinations of CLI
> options I was able to figure it out.
> - [doc correction]: jvmUserArg is referred to in the documentation with
> examples, while in the usage documentation jvmOptions is used (discrepancy
> between the names of flags), see
> https://docs.oracle.com/javase/8/docs/technotes/tools/unix/javapackager.html
>   and
> https://docs.oracle.com/javase/9/deploy/self-contained-application-packaging.htm#JSDPG585
> - [doc correction]: same goes for mac.signing-key-user-name while there is
> no mention of it in the javapackager usage documentation, it takes the full
> name of the user i.e. *Jane Doe*
> *- *[doc and example required]: just adding
> mac.signing-key-developer-id-app=xxxxx isn't enough, needs the other
> code-sign related flags as well, possibly key should be in the Mac KeyStore
> when building it (check if id provided is the correct one, additional
> examples would definitely help to reduce or eliminate experimentation and
> assumptions)
> - [potential bug]: Using *-B*systemWide=true flag causes error -10810 when
> building on the MacOSX in non-gui mode, can be overridden by using the
> -Bmac.dmg.simple=true but we loose the backdrop and automatic shortcut
> creation, etc... Swappin gthe order to: -Bmac.dmg.simple=true and *-B*
> systemWide=true does not help, still ends up building a .dmg package with
> just the app in it (no icon, no background)
> - code signing examples for Windows and MacOSX will certainly help quite a
> bit
> - [doc and example required] .deb packages take a long time to build, some
> additional flags that can help. Some findings along the lines on how to
> speed up dpkg-build:
>
> export CCACHE_DIR=/home/$USER/.ccache
>
> export CCACHE_HASHDIR=$CCACHE_DIR
>
> export DEB_BUILD_OPTIONS="${DEB_BUILD_OPTIONS} --preserve-envvar=CCACHE_DIR
> --prepend-path=/usr/lib/ccache parallel=jobs"
>
> echo "Debian build options: ${DEB_BUILD_OPTIONS}"
>
> -------------------------------
>
> A response with answers for the above will be highly appreciated.
>
> Thanks.
>
> Cheers,
> Mani