Java packaging in Linux has never been trivial. Partially due to strict
principles that most Linux distributions adhere to, partially due to Java
ecosystem encouraging behavior which goes against these principles, but mostly
due to ineffective tooling on both sides of the fence.
Over past 2 years, tooling and guidelines for packaging Java have changed in
Fedora Linux considerably. What used to be a 1000 line build script can soon
become 100 lines of mostly metadata. But all of that relies on sane build system
with predictable behavior on Java side: Maven.
During the course of the talk we will clean up one such build script and
describe how each change was made possible. Most importantly we hope to convince
the audience that for common good, using Maven for Java development even with
all its quirks is better than the alternatives. A wider discussion on other Java
build systems would also be welcome.
