[kde-edu]: Packaging issues

[Harald Sitter]

On Sunday 02 November 2008 16:08:04 Anne-Marie Mahfouf wrote:
> Hi people,
>
> I am submitting this to the mailing list as I cannot sort it out myself and
> it regards kvtml and maybe other distributions as well.
>
> In KDE 4, we wanted to share more of the .kvtml files and thus we install
> those .kvtml files in $KDEDIR/share/kvtml instead of $KDEDIR/share/khangman
> or $KDEDIR/share/kanagram. Thus all programs using KVTML format can use all
> the available files.
>
> But some distributions (debian based) then did not package KHangMan data
> with KHangMan, they packaged it with KAnagram (as Kanagram data also
> installs in $KDEDIR/share/kvtml). KHangMan crashes when there is no data as
> it is designed to start with a word to guess.
>
> So I'd like to see here what should be done to ensure we have a minimum set
> of data shipped with those apps. Every application should be shipped with
> the data that is in the KDE svn application folder, thsi is how we designed
> it. If it is not possible, should KHangMan be redesigned to accomodate no
> data? Should we keep this /share/kvtml folder?

In my opinion the minimum set of data should be deployed as part of the 
application, but as I understood it the kvtml files can be used by all 
applications supporting them, so essentially KAnagram can work with just it's 
own files but enhance the resources by using the ones from KHangMan, so having 
the files inside their applications directory doesn't make much sense.

However, I think should be clear where these files belong to, so instead of 
throwing them just inside share/kvtml using subdirectories would be a good 
idea.
i.e.:
kvtml/khangman/...
kvtml/kanagram/...

That also makes it pretty self-explaining for distributions what to do with 
these files.
In addition to that at least for debian based distributions (and IIRC it's the 
same for rpm based ones) it makes maintaining the package content easier. 
Currently one would have to maintain manually a list of files to ensure the 
ones belonging to KHangMan/KAnagram end up in the right package, while with 
subdirs one could just list kvtml/khangman/* goes in the khangman package and 
kvtml/kanagram/* in the kanagram package.

To sum that up:
* make the KVTML resources searched recursive (if not already)
* install default kvtml files to subdirectories
* as a result distributions can package the associated files more easily

Regards,
Harald
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