structure of kde cvs modules, was Re: libkipi in kdesupport

[Alexander Neundorf]

Hi,

from time to time and it seems increasingly often the structure of the cvs 
modules is discussed. ioslaves to kdelibs or kdebase or to the specific 
modules ? kmail into kdepim ? Some library into kdelibs ? etc.

So here we go with yet another suggestion (for KDE4):

On Saturday 13 March 2004 22:37, Cristian Tibirna wrote:
> On Saturday, 13 March 2004 16:28, Andras Mantia wrote:
> > -----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE-----
> > Hash: SHA1
> >
> > On Saturday 13 March 2004 23:21, Jesper K. Pedersen wrote:
> > > So the question is would kdesupport be a good place, and if yes, may we
> > > please import our files there?
> >
> > that this is the new role of kdesupport - than it should be there.
>
> And then the perceived "official" position of KDE about kdesupport should
> be promptly adnotated to packagers/CVS-compiling users (outside of the
> community/maillists) so that people know that kdesupport is required now.
> No?

We (I, Marc Mutz and others) discussed this topic last week in Chemnitz at the 
Linux Tag.
How about splitting kdelibs into "kdecorelibs" and "kdeapplibs" ?

-kdecorelibs would be kdecore, kdeui, kio, kparts and some others, i.e. 
essential libraries
-kdeapplibs would be e.g. ksmartcard, kate, khtml, kioslave, libkonq and 
others, also libkcddb from kdemultimedia and maybe this new libkipi, 
basically all libraries which are part of kde.

What would this bring ?
All applications would depend only on kdecorelibs and kdeapplibs.
If you are a 3rd party developer, you have to depend only on kdecorelibs and 
kdeapplibs. You don't have to depend on kdemultimedia anymore (with all its 
apps) just to use libkccdb.
I guess the same would apply to several applications which are in kde cvs, 
some of them are grouped in modules because they use some common library.
The other choice would be to move all libraries into kdelibs, but not all libs 
which are used by 2 or 3 apps are essential for kde so that they qualify for 
kdelibs. There should be a stricter line between essential kde libraries and 
more "application level" kde libraries. The core libraries should stay even 
more stable than now.
If you just want to write a kde-compliant application, you only have to depend 
on kdecorelibs, if you want to use kde to its full power, you can use the 
libs in kdeapplibs.

Then there is often this discussion that e.g. if you want to run konqy, you 
need the complete kde, i.e. kdelibs and kdebase. Also many apps which are 
part of kde are a bit anonymous. Apps from the extra gear, like k3b, have a 
better personality. This is a good thing, at least for publicity.

So, maybe also some of the other modules should/could be restructured. kdebase 
could be converted to maybe "kdedesktop", containing the desktop stuff, 
kdesktop, kicker, kwin, ksmserver, ksplashscreen, kstart, kxkb, kmenuedit, 
but not konqy.

All the other things could be grouped more application-specific.

Bye
Alex
-- 
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