kde-baseapps dependency on kdelibs changed in 4.9 branch?

[Andreas Pakulat]

Hi,

On Tue, Sep 11, 2012 at 4:42 PM, Dawit A <adawit at kde.org> wrote:
>
>
> On Tue, Sep 11, 2012 at 10:08 AM, Albert Astals Cid <aacid at kde.org> wrote:
>>
>> El Dimarts, 11 de setembre de 2012, a les 09:51:22, Dawit A va escriure:
>> > On Tue, Sep 11, 2012 at 6:27 AM, Albert Astals Cid <aacid at kde.org>
>> > wrote:
>> > > It seems that the
>> > >
>> > > set(KDE_MIN_VERSION "4.7.97")
>> >
>> > Was that done intentionally or was it forgotten to be updated for the
>> > KDE
>> > 4.9 release ? If the former, then have we now started guaranteeing
>> > forward
>> > compatibility too ?
>>
>> It was done on purpose. Why require newer kdelibs when you don't need
>> them.
>
>
> Because you really don't know that you need them until you actually do ?
> Like I said bug fixes and regressions sometimes require changes in kdelibs.
> If we purposefully shackle ourselves to forward compatibility then such bugs
> and regressions, no matter how bad, cannot be fixed until the next major
> release. If that is acceptable for the sake of being forward compatible,
> then that is fine. However, I really do not see the point of it. Why would
> anyone want to use new version of applications with the older version of the
> required libraries ?

Because upgrading libs is not always easily possible. Thats not so
much an issue with kde-baseapps since those are really basic things
and probably only few people build those without also building
kdelibs. For any other apps people might be using binary packages for
the base stuff which are one or even two releases behind current
stable and they'd still like to work on apps from master. And I think
its important to support these people if possible. So keeping
backwards compatibility.

Also this is not about being forward compatible, but having apps be
backwards compatible with older kdelibs. Forward compatibility of
kdelibs is mostly given anyway due to the promises of keeping BC and
SC of existing API and only adding (and hopefully also keeping
existing behaviour).

Andreas