KDE-buildsystem-basics package ?

[Alexander Neundorf]

On Sunday 22 January 2012, Stephen Kelly wrote:
> Alexander Neundorf wrote:
...
> > My policy is to increase the required cmake version whenever something is
> > added to cmake that we _really_ need.
> > And in this case, wait until it is available as a package for the major
> 
> > distributions:
> Do other packages in distros have higher (sooner) CMake requirements than
> KDE has? If higher version requirements are already imposed by other
> non-KDE packages(I have no idea), then it's not really valuable for us to
> stick with 2.5 year old versions of it. We use cutting edge Qt most of the
> time too. I don't see why our CMake required version strategy must be so
> different.

I do.
Having to update Qt relatively often is a major annoyance and makes 
contributing harder.
I don't want that for CMake.

> Qt and CMake are our two most important dependencies.
> 
> I also don't mean that we should depend on new CMake as soon as it's
> released of course. A 1 year old dependency is fine I'm sure.
> 
> Has it been a maintenance burden to make sure no one uses features added
> after 2.6.4? 

A big thing was adding parenthesis to if() in 2.6.3, this was one of the 
reasons to upgrade. This had caused pain.

> Have you tried to build all of KDE with 2.6.4 to verify that
> it actually works? 

I haven't tried to build all of KDE for along time.
There's just too much stuff going on.
When I do, I do use 2.6.4.

> If it doesn't, that would be interesting information to
> know whether it makes sense to depend on something 2.5 years old and
> whether we are successful in maintaining that. Could you try that?
> 
> I'd say it makes more sense to depend on whatever the latest
> ubuntu/suse/fedora comes with (many KDE developers use that anyway for
> their Qt dependency needs I'm sure).
> 
> That said, I'll defer to you on the CMake version requirement, but I just
> don't understand using a 2.5 year old release :).

Because I didn't have time to up upgrade it last year after Randa basically.
I'd prefer to require 2.8.6, but then there is so much nice stuff in 2.8.7 and 
will be in 2.8.8 that IMO it's worth waiting for them

> > June 2006: cmake 2.4.3
> > March 2007: cmake 2.4.5 (released December 2006)
> > July 2008: cmake 2.6.0  (released May 2008)
> > April 2010: cmake 2.6.4 (released May 2009)
> > 
> > Now since cmake 2.8.3 there are several things in cmake we should make
> > use of. But I don't want to require 2.8.3 for kdelibs 4 now, and upgrade
> > this to 2.8.8 in 3 months already again.
> > 
> > So, yes, I'd actually like to upgrade the required cmake version for
> > stable kdelibs, I'm just not sure whether this is actually allowed.
> > Freeze and all.
> 
> I'm also not sure what the value would be in such a version bump now. 

It would make sure people accidentially using features from cmake > 2.6.4 
don't break the build for those who are still at 2.6.4.
This is significant.

> It's not a frameworks-relevant discussion anyway, but something for the
> buildsystem list.

Yes.
 
Alex