Packaging of Wayland session

[Eric Hameleers]

On Wed, 9 Dec 2015, Martin Graesslin wrote:

> On Wednesday, December 9, 2015 12:54:12 AM CET Eric Hameleers wrote:
>> On Wed, 9 Dec 2015, Martin Graesslin wrote:
>>> Hi KDE distro packagers,
>>>
>>> as you probably are aware Plasma 5.5 is the first release shipping a
>>> Wayland session file. In the current state the session is not much usable
>>> as can be seen in the known issues section.
>>>
>>> Given that I expect that distributions move the relevant files
>>> * startplasmacompositor
>>> * startplasma
>>> * plasmawayland.desktop
>>>
>>> into a dedicated package (plasma-desktop-wayland-session) and do not
>>> install it by default! We don't want users to select the Wayland session
>>> by accident and run into a broken system.
>>>
>>> Also please see https://community.kde.org/KWin/Packaging for advice on how
>>> to package the Wayland session elements.
>>>
>>> Best Regards
>>> Martin Gräßlin
>>
>> Well... Slackware does not create sub-packages, that does not fit in
>> with our philosophy.
>> I expect that the sources are configured to *not* enable compiling
>> the session components by default?
>
> nothing gets compiled. Three files get configured and installed. And of course
> that is not bound to a config option. That would in my opinion be pointless.
> To me this is something to solve by proper packaging on distro level. Sorry
> that this leaves Slackware in a strange state. I didn't know there are distros
> which do not split packages.
>
>> Not having checked out Plasma 5.5 yet, I guess I will eventually find
>> out whether I need to explicitly disable building it
>
> building cannot be disabled. Also Wayland is now a hard dependency in KWin (as
> communicated a few months ago).
>
>> , or else
>> delete the offending files from the package afterwards. I do not want
>> to ship stuff with Plasma 5.5 that is really just a tech preview and
>> gives the user the wrong impression.
>
> deleting the files on the other hand means that your users cannot test and
> cannot provide feedback. My suggestion would be to check whether you are
> affected at all - after all it only matters if your DM supports Wayland
> session files. And in worst case just not shipping the wayland session file,
> so that users can still manually run the startplasmacompositor.
>
> Cheers
> Martin

I think that not shipping the session file in its default location but 
instead adding it to the documentation directory would be the most 
desirable way forward for me and my Slackware packages.
I know about the hard dep on Wayland, that is not a problem. I am more 
concerned about user experience. People who want to tinker and test 
should indeed be given that opportunity.

Cheers, Eric

-- 
Eric Hameleers <alien at slackware.com>
Home: http://alien.slackbook.org/blog/