Maintainers of KDE Frameworks for the Windows platform?

[Christoph Cullmann (cullmann.io)]

On 2022-01-24 01:00, Friedrich W. H. Kossebau wrote:
> Hi,
> 
> in the past it was hard to find someone to fix things for KDE 
> Frameworks on
> Windows, and too often people not interested in Windows had instead to 
> spend
> their costly leisure time to solve problems, e.g. by debugging via CI 
> runs.
> 
> I do not think we can expect from every contributor/patch author they 
> are
> capable to understand and to solve things on all platforms. For one as 
> this
> does not scale, and even more when the platform is a proprietary one 
> that
> otherwise works against the mission of KDE and people rather avoid to 
> have to
> know about it.
> 
> So we need dedicated maintainer teams for each platform IMHO. And if 
> that team
> is empty, have to drop the official support for that platform, instead 
> of e.g.
> having it a "broken windows theory" thing on CI (pun intended).
> 
> Given Linux (default, all the usual suspect contributors), FreeBSD 
> (Tobias,
> Adriaan), and Android (some other usual suspect contributors) are 
> covered,
> there is a reaction time the same day often, when help is needed with 
> those.
> Other than for Windows (and macOS once it makes it to CI).
> 
> Who would be available as contact person for KF @ Windows, so could be
> reliably called in to solve code issues appearing in new work or 
> regressions
> by external influences? Either by a to be created @teams tag or as 
> highly
> available individuals?
> 
> If we do not have enough people who can provide at least, say, weekly 
> work on
> the Windows platform, I would propose to drop the official support, as 
> it is
> an annoying burden to those who have no stakes on that platform.
> And also harms the reputation of the KF product, because being badly
> maintained and thus partially broken makes it into the developer/user
> experience on those platforms, which then is mapped onto the whole 
> product
> (rightfully), not just the support on that platform.

I don't agree with that mindset.

Naturally, as you point out in your other mail,
the unit tests must be fixed.

But beside that, I see Windows like any other platform,
you need to ensure your changes don't kill it.

It is not acceptable to commit stuff that breaks the e.g. FreeBSD
CI, the same rule can be there for Windows, too.

If you need help, you can ping people like me for Windows or we could 
create
some @teams/windows or whatever.

Beside that, I think in most cases, our code is on a level that doesn't
really have that much operating specific parts.

There are special cases like baloo and Co., I actually would propose to
not support such stuff on Windows (or non Linux) at all,
not sure if it should be a Framework at all in that case.

Greetings
Christoph

-- 
Ignorance is bliss...
https://cullmann.io | https://kate-editor.org