Separating everything ?

[Mirko Boehm]

Hi, 

On Feb 8, 2013, at 02:07, Patrick Spendrin <ps_ml at gmx.de> wrote:

> One of the reasons of splitting kdelibs into separate repositories is to
> simplify the usage of single modules.
> From the perspective of a full *KDE* desktop, there is no problem in
> building & using all of kdelibs, since each library will be used several
> times from several applications.

I actually fail to see how splitting the libraries will make things simpler. It does make handling the repositories harder, especially for newcomers who have to learn a whole new (and unintuitive) side of git, as Kevin said.

> If you do not have a full *KDE* desktop (running a single KDE
> application on a gnome desktop or maybe the wish to use KDE technology
> in your Qt application), this will not be the case, and you will
> generate overhead. Of course the overhead can be cut down by (1)
> splitting kdelibs either at buildtime (by switching libraries on or off
> at cmake time) or (2)after building it (currently done by some distros
> to some extend). For KDE on Windows e.g. (1) will bring the overhead of
> having a complete kdelibs package for rather tiny libraries and (2) is
> simply forbidden by missing manpower.

I actually have a patch laying around here that makes all the libraries into optional subdirectories that can be enabled and disabled at cmake time. This very nicely solves the turnaround time issue when hacking on one specific framework. 

> Another argument against splitting is that developers will have to
> update multiple repositories. As mentioned by others this problem can be
> solved by using git submodules, or even other ways of scripting.
> From a packagers point of view, I doubt that the number of
> repositories/tarballs matters since packaging is scripted.
> 
> I cannot see any advantage from keeping tierX together in one repository
> too because the same problems apply.

I fail to see the advantage of creating a Qt-like repo hierarchy. And it adds the problem of possible dependencies between frameworks. 

As Frank said: "I haven't seen any convincing argument yet why multiple repositories are better." 
+1.


Cheers, 

Mirko.
-- 
Mirko Boehm | mirko at kde.org | KDE e.V.
FSFE Fellow, FSFE Team Germany
Qt Certified Specialist