Proposal: New module "kdecore"

[David Faure]

On Wed, Apr 19, 2006 at 10:58:38AM +0200, Thiago Macieira wrote:
> David Faure wrote:
> >I think this request is really about splitting kdebase into one more
> > subdir: 
> > - workspace (main X11 desktop apps like kicker and kdesktop 
> > etc.) not needed to run KDE apps under TWM, but needed to run a full
> > KDE desktop on X11. 
> > - coreapps: apps needed at runtime by other apps 
> 
> > - apps: other apps, needed by users but not by other apps
> 
> How about moving these out of kdebase?
And where? I don't see the point; as I said it's only confusion. 

> Also, where is Konqueror? I would consider it part of Workspace, because 
> no environment is full without a file manager. On the other hand, even if 
> I were in TWM, I'd like to use Konqueror...

Konqueror is -definitely- not part of workspace. Workspace == "X11 only".
The logic is not "kde is not full without xyz"; that's the logic for kdebase itself,
and that's why I don't think we should "move those apps out of kdebase".

> >coreapps would contain
> > - drkonqi
> 
> drkonqi is almost kdelibs...

That's the point. Everything that I listed in coreapps is "the stuff that is needed
alongside kdelibs although it's not libs". The runtime dependencies of kde apps,
as opposed to compile-time dependencies.

> > - kioslaves (I know they're not really apps, but let's not name the
> > directory "core") 
> > - kdesu 
> > - kdebugdialog? maybe this one belongs in kdesdk?
> 
> Yes. Applications don't need to run kdebugdialog. Normal users will never 
> know about it either.

Yes; OTOH telling a user "install all of kdesdk just to tell me the debug output
from area 1245" seems a bit overkill (and might raise the bar for meaningful
debug output logs).

> > - kreadconfig, kdialog, kstart (all potentially needed by scripts)
> > - khelpcenter
> > - kcontrol? or only kcmshell?
> 
> kcmshell, probably, with kcontrol being part of workspace.

I think that running kcontrol makes sense in gnome, windows, and Mac OSX
as well. So IMHO it belongs to apps.

> >At packaging time it should be rather easy to split kdebase into three
> > packages especially if we keep all the configuration stuff modular -
> > i.e. with nothing in kdebase/ itself, other than a CMakeListst.txt with
> > three add_subdirectory calls. This should also make it easy to
> > developers to only update & recompile kdebase/coreapps without needing
> > to care about workspace and apps. But at the same time, it prevents
> > module multiplication. Modular modules (hehe) are much easier to handle
> > than hundreds of modules (and people wondering why they can't find app
> > xyz anymore...)
> 
> Distributions already split KDE...

Not all of them, and we don't make it easy for them at all; they have to
compile everything N times, or to split out the result of the one big compilation.
Instead we should make it easy to actually split at the source level; we could
provide kdebase-workspace.tar.gz, kdebase-coreapps.tar.gz (or just kdebase-core.tar.gz?)
and kdebase-apps.tar.gz. My suggestion makes it easy to do so, that's one of the advantages
of rewriting the build system: we can make things modular; more than before.

--
David Faure
faure at kde.org