[Replicant] Criteria for Android applications

[W. Kosior]

Sorry, I accidently sent the last email before finishing writing it :/

So, adding to what I already sent, I'd expect the SDK in Debian and
Trisquel to have the highest possible quality of packaging and to be
reasonably up-to-date for most apps' needs. Someone could as well
define a soft requirement that Android apps have to build under this
SDK in order to be accepted into the Directory ;)

> The next issue would be to understand what to do if an application
> uses Maven Central.

May I suggest one upstream project that is actually trying to do sth
about the Maven madness and that could prove useful to us and would be
worth contributing to?

It's Debian. It is packaging java software, including that from Maven
(which is where probably most java software lives anyway). Hooking into
Debian's java packages seems like a good idea because:
- it actually has a huge progress; many packages are already there and
  there are helper tools for the task
- it provides the highest quality of packaging; compare Debian
  packaging policy with for example the dirtyness of java packages in
  Parabola
- packages in Debian end up in Trisquel, so upstream is worth
  contributing to

For more info, see:
http://java.debian.net/
https://wiki.debian.org/Java/Packaging

I assume Debian's java .jars living in the filesystem are suitable for
somehow using for building Android apps. After all, portability is
supposed to be Java's strong side... However, I don't know how easy or
hard it would be to actually perform the build.

One counterargument is that someone could prefer to have java software
packaged for some cross-platform package manager or one that can be used
without root access. True, although I guess the advantages severely
outweigh this one disadvantage of Debian.

Good luck with you Replicant work (especially the Maven re-packaging
issue; this is a thing that bothers even Android non-users like myself)

Wojtek
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