PKGBUILD Tips for Funky Java App

Question

I'm trying to make a PKGBUILD for the GURPS character sheet program. It's a Java app, so I tried to follow the Java PKGBUILD guidelines from the wiki, but gcs has a weird build system that made things difficult. The main annoyances are that it tries to include its own JRE, and rather than running using a normal jar it includes a binary launcher for which I can't find the source.
Here's my PKGBUILD that just tries to whip the binary package into shape:
pkgname=gcs
pkgver=4.0.1
pkgrel=1
pkgdesc="An editor for building character sheets for GURPS 4th Edition."
arch=('i686' 'x86_64')
url="http://gurpscharactersheet.com"
license=('MPL')
depends=('java-runtime')
src="$pkgname-$pkgver-linux"
if test "$CARCH" == i686; then
src+='-32'
fi
source=("${src}.zip::http://sourceforge.net/projects/gcs-java/files/${src}.zip/download")
md5sums=('SKIP')
build() {
pushd $srcdir/$src
rm -r support/jre
ln -s /usr/lib/jvm/default/jre support/jre
popd
package() {
install -d $pkgdir/usr/{bin,share}
cp -dr --no-preserve=ownership ${src} $pkgdir/usr/share/gcs
ln -s $pkgdir/usr/share/gcs/gcs $pkgdir/usr/bin/gcs
Am I doing anything stupid?

Answer 1

How are you supposed to configure a package that requires Java 8? Should I not use $JAVA_HOME since that could be pointing to an older version?
Anyway, I've produced a better package, but the build process is still kinda ugly.
I couldn't figure out a way to use ant's bundle (which includes the JRE and the precompiled binaries), so I skipped that entirely and just copied everything myself - that let me use the recommended /usr/share/java organization. But since the app expects everything to be in one directory (with a fixed path), I had to patch it to let me configure the app directory using an environment variable.
Here's a git repo for the files: https://github.com/silverhammermba/gcs
And my new PKGBUILD:
pkgname=gcs
pkgver=4.0.1
pkgrel=1
pkgdesc="A WYSIWYG editor for building character sheets for GURPS 4th Edition."
arch=('any')
url="http://gurpscharactersheet.com"
license=('MPL')
makedepends=('git' 'apache-ant')
depends=('java-runtime')
source=(
'git://code.trollworks.com/apple_stubs.git'
"git://code.trollworks.com/gcs.git#tag=$pkgver"
"git://code.trollworks.com/toolkit.git#tag=$pkgver"
md5sums=('SKIP' 'SKIP' 'SKIP')
prepare() {
cd "$srcdir/toolkit"
git apply "$startdir/set_app_path_from_env.patch"
build() {
cd "$srcdir/apple_stubs"
ant
cd "$srcdir/toolkit"
ant
cd "$srcdir/gcs"
ant
package() {
install -d "$pkgdir/usr/share/java/gcs"
find "$srcdir" -name '*.jar' ! -name '*-src.*' -execdir install -m644 {} "$pkgdir/usr/share/java/gcs" \;
mv $pkgdir/usr/share/java/gcs/gcs-*.jar "$pkgdir/usr/share/java/gcs/gcs.jar"
install -d "$pkgdir/usr/share/gcs"
cp -dr --no-preserve=ownership "$srcdir/gcs/Library" "$pkgdir/usr/share/gcs"
install -Dm755 "$startdir/gcs.sh" "$pkgdir/usr/bin/gcs"
Last edited by silverhammermba (2014-10-01 15:23:13)