Do not split QML packages

[Albert Astals Cid]

El dissabte, 12 d’agost de 2023, a les 21:11:22 (CEST), Lisandro Damian 
Nicanor Perez Meyer va escriure:
> Hi Carl!
> 
> On viernes, 11 de agosto de 2023 11:38:53 -03 Carl Schwan wrote:
> > Hello,
> > 
> > I just receive yet another bug report about a QML module not being
> > installed by an user using a Debian based distributions (KDE Neon
> > Unstable). This is caused by the fact that Kirigami Addons 0.9 added a
> > new module
> > (org.kde.kirigamiaddons.delegates) and Merkuro and a bunch of other apps
> > in
> > KDE Gear 23.08 require this module.
> > 
> > Merkuro correctly bumped the dependency in its cmakelists.txt file to
> > depend on Kirigami Addons 0.9 which should have ensured that the module
> > is installed.
> > 
> > But since some distributions are splitting the kirigami addons in many
> > micro packages and forgot to add the new module in their dependency list
> > for Merkuro (and probably other apps), the new required module isn't
> > installed and the app crash on startup. This is not the first time this
> > happen.
> I am not the one who split kirigami *but* I am the one that defined [this
> policy] long ago.
> 
> [this policy] <https://qt-kde-team.pages.debian.net/qmlmodulesnaming.html>

Maybe after decades of packaging mistakes, Debian should realize that policy 
is not a good idea and phase out the policy and package things like we ship 
them.

Best regards,
  Albert

> 
> Back at the time this was defined, and as I can remember, QML modules where
> designed as libraries, where a developer is free to use whatever it needs
> from them and only those really required at runtime are really needed. So
> splitting has (and still has) a lot of sense, specially if some module adds
> a 3rd dependency you never need, or even more, you would not like on your
> system.
> That being said:
> > Please do not split Kirigami Addons in many small packages. Kirigami
> > Addons
> > is meant to be packaged as one single package and some QML modules even
> > depends on each others. The different QML imports are only for the
> > developer convenience and should be considered like C++ namespace as
> > something only interesting in the code.
> 
> This is totally fair to ask **but** be verbose on README (in case you
> haven't, again, I'm not kirigami's packager). I can totally understand you
> consider them "a single thing under a namespace", but that's not what the
> original design was meant to. Again, totally fair, but only if you express
> this as such.
> 
> > Kirigami itself will also be spitted in multiple QML modules in KF6 and
> > similarly this should result in one package and not multiple one.
> 
> Perfect. Again, if not there, please add a note on toyur README.
> 
> > Sorry for being a bit angry, but I received a lot of reports about this
> > across years in bugs.kde.org, on Matrix, on Mastodon and even on blog
> > posts. This gives the user a very bad impression as the application crash
> > on startup and I find myself in a frustration situation because the
> > packaging of my apps is outside my reach and I can't fix it myself.
> 
> While I can understand this please take into account that, by design, QML
> modules should be independent unless they have an explicit interdependency
> on them. And even in that case, to the best of my knowledge, they are not
> easy to catch so errors might happen.
> 
> Kinds regards, Lisandro.