All About the Apps Goal

[Aleix Pol]

On Fri, Apr 23, 2021 at 11:58 AM Jonathan Riddell <jr at jriddell.org> wrote:
>
> KDE's All About the Apps Goal hopes to use modern methods of getting our apps to users.  I seem not to have been clear about what I mean by that so time to check in and ask again.  These days apps (and websites and any software) gets developed by developers who are empowered to deploy them all the way to the user through suitable QA.  In the apps of KDE apps that means using app stores (flathub, snap store, appimagehub, microsoft store, fdroid, google play etc) and integrating the packaging for those stores into the apps repos themselves and our release tools.
>
> This is a massive change of culture compared to what KDE has largely done until now where the packaging and deployment have been separated into often entirely separated organisations.  That does not seem to have served us well, our software has not taken over the world except by other orgaisations who have followed these practices, such as KHTML's derivative now being used by Microsoft Edge. It's not a setup done anywhere outside the Linux distros and KDE has long aspired to move beyond just Linux distros.
>
> Our most successful apps have long gone ahead and done this, Krita is now available on the Epic Games store.  It seems strange to me not to want to emulate that success.  Moving packaging into app repos makes it smoother
>
> Recently I made a minimum viable patch for the KDE Gear release tooling to bump up the version numbers where those apps have snapcraft packaging files.  However I've been told I shouldn't "overstate the nature of the goal" with an objection to integrating the packaging into the app repositories.
>
> https://invent.kde.org/sysadmin/release-tools/-/merge_requests/15#note_205935
>
> I've little interest in putting lots of apps into app stores without this change of culture where app developers take some responsibility for the end result.  It would likely end up with unmaintained apps.
>
> So would KDE developers prefer the status quo where our packaging is deliberately separated from our app development?  Or can we start with moving, where appropriate for the teams doing the work, to move packaging into the app repos and link the apps with the users?

Here's a separate ticket that is relevant to the topic:
https://phabricator.kde.org/T14380

I think it's important because it tries to address the same as the MR
without the actual technical changes in the way.

And for what it's worth, I don't think anyone has disagreed with the
general sentiment in any of the many places this has been posted.

Aleix