You mostly likely know that I’m a proud contributor to the Fedora Project. I helped out a bit on blogs.fedoraproject.org and I generally also keep the wiki clean. However, I haven’t ever made a package.
So my first packaging adventure is packaging the IRC bot library that ScriptBot uses.
One word: pain.
There’s a few nuances with PircBot. It comes as a jar with source inside it as well as the compiled classes. I extracted the source, made it usable for RPM to build. I scrapped the binaries, and put it into a traditional tarball. So apparently that doesn’t work.
Next, I found RPM wasn’t making a buildroot correctly. So I had to make a hack around that.
Then, it came to the install path. There’s a page on the Fedora Project Wiki apparently. But I didn’t know that! It’s not linked from the frequently visited Packaging pages.
After getting it to build, it went through a scratch build on Koji, then I filed for review on Bugzilla.
That’s when I found the page for Fedora’s Java packaging guidelines. I apparently did need documentation (although all I can put is a link, the documentation isn’t really pullable from the website). So I ended marking the bug for my request as CLOSED DEFERRED.
Expect a part two post when I actually get Pircbot into the repos. Also likely is a part three when ScriptBot itself gets in.
See the ScriptBot project page at scriptbot.theoks.net.