A while back I started an Ant task that can be used to create Debian deb packages: ant-deb-task.
With ant-deb-task you can create deb packages on any platform where Java is available, not only on a Debian system. Also, being an Ant task, it makes it easy to add this to your build scripts and package your application.
I had Java running on my Ubuntu system for quite a while now and I switched to the Sun package provided by Ubuntu as soon as it became available. Upgrading to Edgy seemed smooth with regards to Java, until last Friday. The problems I started noticing were related to keystore generation, first issues with the format of distinguished names (no spaces accepted after commas anymore) and today problems with the format of the keystores. Keystores created with keytool could were no longer recognized by Java code.
It turns out that the version of keytool I was using after upgrading to Edgy was the one provided by Gnu. Actually the whole set of Java binaries was a mix of Sun and Gnu binaries. Running a debian alternatives command fixed this:
After last week's Sun Developers Days here in Vancouver, a discussion started on the Java Users Group mailing list about Java and Linux. Here is an open letter written by one the list members:
Open Letter to Sun about Java on Linux
A nice way to install Java on a Debian based system is by creating the .deb package on your own machine using the java-package utility. Follow the instructions in the "Fastest way to install Sun's Java in Ubuntu?" blog entry.
For Ubuntu you can also use a third party repository that has JDK 1.5.
Update: Another debian repository with non-free software is hosted on tux.org, see the Installing Java 1.4 Under Ubuntu 5.04/Hoary Hedgehog blog posting.
Since I was using the command line quite a bit lately, and since there seems to be no shell extension for Ant, I was thinking that command completion specific for Ant would be of much help. For example you should be able to type "ant t" and then hit Tab and Bash will expand this to "ant test" (assuming there is a target called test and there are no other targets starting with t).
After opening one too many command prompt windows in order to run a specific Ant task I realized that it would be nice to be able to either double click those build.xml files or to right click them and have a submenu with all available targets.
I was sure that someone already did this and after a bit of googeling the only thing that came up was exactly this but for NAnt, the extension is NAntMenu. There seems to be nothing like this for
