Why modules? (was: Re: A humble packager's request: Retire kdeaddons.)

[Rob Kaper]

On Wed, Feb 11, 2004 at 10:19:57AM -0600, Russell Miller wrote:
> Why do we have modules at all?

So that developers and early adopters won't have to check out several
gigabytes of kdepim+kdenetwork+kdegraphics when they just want
libs+base+games+multimedia. And we can't just put every application in its
own module either, because that would pretty much remove the E from KDE.[1]

We *do* inconvenience ourselves (and sometimes packagers, I suppose) by
pre-organizing our software. But that's the entire point. We're not one big
heap of code and we're not countless seperate entities either: we're
organized. That means we have fights on mailinglists and occasionally hate
each other so much that we need weeks of therapy in remote Czech locations
to work together.

But in the end, we can tell the world, "here's KDE x.y".

> All this separate module stuff seems to be causing a lot more trouble than
> it's solving.
>
> This would remove dependency problems, remove squabbles over where to put 
> particular software packages, and solve the problem of duplicate compiles 
> (each program would be able to build the dependencies that it needs).

But it would demote us to a bunch of hackers saying "here's hundreds of
applications, have fun turning that into a desktop environment". KDE is more
than that.

[1] We *could* actually *develop* less centralized, but prior to release it
is vital we pull the bits together for peer review and integration testing.

Rob
-- 
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