2

I've noticed that many open source projects use jsvc (the apache commons daemon) for wrapping a java program in a service. I've seen several ways of including it, as source or with binaries for common environments. Is source a preferred method?

Tony Kurc
  • 33
  • 5
  • Source code is always the method of choice for distributing free software. Of course, you can *additionally* provide pre-compiled binaries for some popular platforms. – 5gon12eder Dec 11 '14 at 04:17
  • 1
    While not a technical reason to do so, some open source governance has very strict guidelines (legal reasons) on what is acceptable for [source] releases and what is not. If you're working on free software you should check what those rules are, regardless of the technical merit of the alternatives. – MikeD Dec 11 '14 at 05:11

1 Answers1

3

Unless you have a well defined set of supported platforms (e.g. like Apache BigTop) then you are better off sticking with source packaging.

Especially when JVSC is built with shared libraries, keeping your bundled binaries compatible across platforms is going to be a larger headache than it's worth. For a case study in this difficulty, you can read the problems Hadoop ran into when it attempted to bundle JVSC (they opted to skip even including source and went with requiring external installation)

Sean Busbey
  • 156
  • 5