How to handle KDE not respecting YOUR distros requirements?

[Thomas Pfeiffer]

On Freitag, 25. März 2016 23:02:58 CET Richard Brown wrote:
> I think part of the problem is what is perceived as the 'attitude' of
> KDE developers
> 
> Without apologising for the other reply to this thread, I think this
> is a point where it makes sense to point something out
> 
> KDE is not a 'core' part of many ..indeed most.. distributions any
> more, and thinking that KDE reserves the right to demand or shape the
> dependencies of distributions is an approach that brings with it
> friction.
> 
> I do hate quoting distrowatch statistics, but I believe them to be
> accurate enough to serve the point I wish to illustrate
> 
> Of the top 10 Distributions in the last 12 months in Distrowatch, only
> one, openSUSE, currently ships KDE as a default option in it's
> installer.
> 
> Because we all know distrowatch's counting is flawed, even expanding
> it to the top 25 only increases that number to two (PCLinuxOS)
> 
> So while it isn't "99%", if KDE wants distributions to follow what 90%
> of all other distros do, that would be to put KDE as a secondary or
> tertiary option, if offer it to their users at all

How well does GNOME run on a distribution without systemd? Does it run at all? 
From what I see on the Gentoo wiki [1], GNOME needs to be patched in order to 
run with openRC, and it wasn't GNOME who provided that patchset.

As Martin put it: Patches to make our software work without systemd are always 
welcome, people calling us "crazy" are not.
 
> And that's not going to do KDE, or KDE users, any favours.
> 
> My advice would be to change the mindset.
> Make KDE easier than the others for distributions to integrate on their
> stack. Listen to the pain points from projects like Slackware (#23 on
> Distrowatch) and openSUSE (#4 on Distrowatch).
> rovide more information upfront and in advance. Include supporting
> information, explain *why*. I'm not asking this extra work for the
> hell of it, but this is dreadfully important in order to ensure that:
> 
>  a) Distributions can be prepared and don't face nasty surprises
> suddenly which risk their release schedules and the expectation of
> their users.
>  b) Distributions can start meaningful, constructive dialogue with KDE
> developers and we can really have a two way street where KDE listens
> and adjusts to the problems of those trying to distribute it while
> simultaneously distributions are happier to bend an adapt to the
> desires of KDE developers
> 
> Throwing more debug info into cmake isn't going to solve the problem.
> That just leads to more breakages for our packagers to have to debug.
> This is first and foremost a communication problem.
> We need to learn and understand what you are doing and why in order to
> be able to deal with it.

> I realise that works both ways but, for example with openSUSE, I think
> we're doing a pretty good job of communicating what we are doing and
> why regarding our two different distributions, and I think it is
> therefore somewhat self-explanatory how each treat KDE a little
> differently. We have awesome guys like Luca who are so wrapped up in
> both KDE and openSUSE there cannot possibly be a case of 'us vs them'
> with someone like him acting as a conduit for both of our projects.
> Even beyond him, we do our best to be setup in a way to make it easy
> to have these conversations, so lets have them, and move on from the
> 'lists of demands' which I fear has tainted the discussions to date.
> 
> The Question I want to see answered is - Where can a distribution find
> a comprehensive list of what KDE is dependant on, and in the case of
> "optional-but-recommended" dependencies where can we see the
> explanation from KDE's perspective and benefits of satisfying that
> dependency?

That is why I asked for input from distributions in the thread about optional 
dependencies. We need to know from you which information you need, how and 
when you need it, so we can give it to you in the way you need it.

Ware are not trying to force our way of communicating our dependencies onto 
you. We'd like to know from you what you need.
 
I'll start a new thread for input on what distros need from us in general.

> As an aside - if KDE is prepared to be more flexible in order to
> support *BSD distributions, where does this attitude that all Linux
> distributions should conform to a template of KDE's choosing come
> from? It seems to me to be a double standard that seems to be lacking
> an anchor in common sense as far as I can parse.

From what I've been told, the BSDs are actively working on offering 
compatibility layers for missing things like logind instead of saying "[BSD] 
does not have a steenking systemd". Why can't Slackware do the same?

Cheers,
Thomas