Welcome everybody! - What can we do for you?

[Thomas Pfeiffer]

On Freitag, 4. März 2016 08:17:08 CET H W Tovetjärn wrote:
> Hi,

Hi totte!

> I'm a contributor to Chakra and mostly see about our infrastructure. I
> have previously maintained the KDE SC packages (back in the days of 4.x).
> 
> What constitutes the Plasma experience you want the users to have and
> the distributions to deliver? Most of what I learned about packaging KDE
> software was through trial and error as well as following in the
> footsteps of other distributions. I may be missing something obvious
> here but I never found anything on the three KDE wikis aside from this:
> https://techbase.kde.org/Getting_Started/Build.  I would personally find
> a set of guidelines (at minimum) or a well written policy and protocol
> (especially concerning patches not accepted upstream) helpful.

Thank you for your input!
It does indeed seem like we could provide better guidance for packagers, and I 
think it makes sense to create them in collaboration with you all to ensure 
that they work well for those who use them.

> On 03/03/16 21:41, Thomas Pfeiffer wrote:
> > - Do you feel well enough informed about which packages from KDE are
> > needed
> > for a decent Plasma experience?
> 
> I would expect KDE to define what it considers *decent* first, perhaps a
> set of guidelines as stated above. Something technical and tangible, not
> subjective and prone to misinterpretation. If you are referring to which
> packages we should have installed by default then guidelines would be
> useful here too. Please provide a link to them if they already exist and
> I missed them.

Indeed, this is one need we already have identified, and we've made it one of 
the tasks for the Distribution Outreach Program to define such guidelines.

> > - Do we communicate clearly enough under which circumstances (kernel,
> > drivers, libraries, configuration, paths, whatever) our software works
> > best?
> There are occasionally some mails on the kde-packager at kde.org mailing
> list, but a specific and complete source of information would be greatly
> appreciated.

Noted, see above.

> > - Do available feedback channels work well enough in case of questions or
> > problems with distributing our software?
> 
> There's the kde-packager at kde.org mailing list and the bugtracker. KDE
> IRC channels are usually rather dormant (especially #kde, my personal
> experience is that a user is more likely to find the help s/he needs in
> the channel for his/her distribution) but that may not be strictly
> related. I'm fine with the mailing list and bugtracker. I'd appreciate
> an IRC channel for packagers but perhaps it would be better to allow for
> these questions in #kde-devel to not cause fragmentation.

Ah, good point! I don't know if the KDE developers would prefer an extra 
channel for packaging-related questions or having them in existing channels.
What's your take on this, devs?
 
> > - Do you find customization of our software for a distribution-unique user
> > experience easy enough?
> > - Do we offer enough branding opportunities?
> 
> Since the VDG does a considerable amount of work, would KDE as a whole
> rather see their work as a part of distributions than downstream
> creations or adaptions? I'm asking because I'd like to know if having
> their work the default is part of the "decent Plasma experience".

I can only talk from my perspective as a member of the VDG: We try to provide 
themes which work well for the end user. Therefore, we are happy if 
distributions find them good enough to use them as they are, but we don't see a 
problem with them wanting to create their own visual identity, either.
What we care about if distributions modify existing themes or create their own 
is that their quality is on par with what we provide. They should not 
introduce bugs, they should offer good contrast and readability, easy to 
understand icons etc.

What we don't want is users thinking that Plasma is badly designed when in 
fact it's just their distribution that messed things up with their theming.

We also hope that if distributions ship their own Look & Feel, they also ship 
those provided by us for their users to choose as an alternative (e.g. if they 
have seen a screenshot in the Breeze design and decided "I want that!".

> I think it's fair to say that you offer enough branding opportunities as
> it is.

Good to hear!