Where to put kwayland integration plugins

[Martin Graesslin]

On Saturday, July 2, 2016 11:41:11 AM CEST David Faure wrote:
> On lundi 6 juin 2016 11:26:58 CEST Aleix Pol wrote:
> > On Mon, Jun 6, 2016 at 8:32 AM, Martin Graesslin <mgraesslin at kde.org> 
wrote:
> > > Hi framework-developers,
> > > 
> > > in Plasma we have a repository called kwayland-integration. It provides
> > > a
> > > plugin for:
> > > * KWindowSystem
> > > * KIdleTime
> > > 
> > > using the KWayland client API. Thus it makes these frameworks functional
> > > on
> > > windowing system Wayland.
> > > 
> > > I want to move the plugins into frameworks and are wondering how to do
> > > that
> > > and where to move them to.
> > > 
> > > I see the following options:
> > > 1. Integrate directly into kwindowsystem and kidletime
> > > 2. Merge them into frameworks-integration
> > > 3. Create a new framework kwayland-integration
> > > 4. create a new framework "kwindowsystem-wayland" and
> > > "kidletime-wayland"
> > > 
> > > Option 1 is I think an absolute no-no as it would turn kwindowsystem and
> > > kidletime from tier 1 to tier 2 and that would affect a huge amount of
> > > other frameworks. For everything which is not in tier 1, I think it's
> > > the
> > > way to go.
> > > 
> > > Option 2 is something I don't want to do as that would combine windowing
> > > system integration code with random other stuff and would result in
> > > weird
> > > dependencies. (To use KIdleTime on Wayland one needs X11 and Phonon?)
> > > 
> > > The same actually also applies to Option 3, though it is just two
> > > frameworks and all dependencies would be tier 1.
> > > 
> > > So personally I think option 3 or option 4 are the way to go.
> > > 
> > > What do you think? Better ideas?
> > 
> > I agree ideally it's 3 or 4. Where do you have it now? Are they
> > already separate repositories? If so, just moving them to frameworks
> > could make sense.
> > 
> > In Purpose I have a similar problem (and I know the discussion is also
> > relevant for other frameworks). We usually don't want plugins to raise
> > the tier of your base framework, but you still need them to be
> > distributed together and either way you need to make sure the plugins
> > will be available when the system is deployed (which is actually much
> > easier in option 1).
> 
> The alternative is to use option 1 with a cmake option to disable the
> kwayland-based plugin. This offers benefits because
> - on systems with wayland enabled, you are sure the plugin is present (no
> bug report like "idle detection doesn't work" (because of a missing
> package)) - on systems where dependencies should be kept to a minimum (e.g.
> an X11-based embedded system) one can easily compile without the kwayland
> dependency
> 
> Application developers using KIdleTime or KWindowSystem do expect it to work
> on all platforms where the application works, so surely a dependency on
> kwayland can't be a problem on wayland.

That's actually not the case. Both KIdleTime and KWindowSystem (runtime) 
depend on additional Wayland protocols currently only provided in KWin/
Wayland. That means your KIdleTime based application won't work in e.g. GNOME.

Given that the real world benefit of option 1 is not that large.

Cheers
Martin
-------------- next part --------------
A non-text attachment was scrubbed...
Name: signature.asc
Type: application/pgp-signature
Size: 181 bytes
Desc: This is a digitally signed message part.
URL: <http://mail.kde.org/pipermail/kde-frameworks-devel/attachments/20160702/59a506e8/attachment.sig>