CVS has *nothing* to do with releases (was: App duplication again)

[Rob Kaper]

On Mon, May 06, 2002 at 02:06:40PM +0200, Michael Matz wrote:
> > Some times I get the impression that the only reason some applications
> > are put into CVS are for the convenience of developers that grew too
> > lazy to download a tarball.
> 
> Wow.  If this is your impression you are absolutely right.  CVS indeed is
> a tool for developers.  If you think, that it's wrong to use CVS for what
> it was designed for, you are severely misguided.

No, but *I* think some applications are included because some developers are
too lazy to *release* and *market* a tarball.

> It seems to me, that some if not most people on this thread think that the
> content of CVS is, what is the KDE distro.  This is not so.  Historically
> it partly was, but never was it designed thus.  It's just for the
> convenience of developers.

Except for kdenonbeta (on purpose) and some other modules (koffice, older
stuff), KDE CVS *is* the KDE "distro". What we need is a module where
developers can maintain their app with the convenience of CVS, but that will
not be packaged for release. Wait, I just described kdenonbeta! How
convenient, we already have that.

Of course there is a "cool"-factor of having your app within one of the KDE
meta packages (kdemultimedia, kdegames, etc), which is why we all want to be
in there. There are also other motivations such as an likely growth of your
install base, thus developer and user interest..

The problem which remains is "who gets to decide what goes into the meta
packages and what not?". I don't have an answer to that, except that I'd
like to see a requirement of having been in kdenonbeta for at least one
release cycle before inclusion, so we can filter out the long-term, serious
applications.

> It is obvious that some people do want such a "core" KDE distribution
> besides kdelibs/base.  And that it most probably should not contain too
> many duplicates.  This is a fine thing.  A thing I even would support in
> theory (though I think the decision process would be hard). A thing which
> yet has to be implemented.  A thing which looks like a list of apps to me.
> A thing which is not CVS.

Maintaining an application in CVS has *nothing* to do with seperate
releases. Atlantik has never been outside of KDE CVS and I've done releases
with cvs2pack while it was in nonbeta and I will probably do so again with
the kdegames version between now and 3.1 release. monopd has always been
inside SourceForge CVS and I've done releases with "make dist".

Rob
-- 
Rob Kaper     | Gimme some love, gimme some skin,
cap at capsi.com | if we ain't got that then we ain't got much
www.capsi.com | and we ain't got nothing, nothing! -- "Nothing" by A