Chapter 4. Advice to Java packagers

Be sure to manage all dependencies by hand in debian/control. Debian development tools cannot find them automatically like they do with C programs and libraries (or like dh_perl does it for Perl, a volunteer to write dh_java would be welcome).

In hand-written debian/rules, a lot of calls can be removed since they are useless for Java packages, e.g. dh_strip and dh_shlibdeps.

Source package handling is painful, since most Java upstream programs come with .class files. I suggest to make a new .orig tarball after cleaning them, otherwise, dpkg-source will complain.

Java properties files are probably better under /etc and flagged as configuration files (this will be integrated in the policy, one day).