[KDE/Mac] Developing KDE on Mac

[Mike McQuaid]

On 18 Aug 2010, at 20:14, Sjors Gielen wrote:

> The situation with Qt is *completely* different from the situation with KDE. Qt is merely a library. A bunch of frameworks and you're done. KDE consists of much more than that, one of which is the daemons. I indeed checked the size of the Qt library including all headers and with full debugging, no stripping. Still, you have to agree that having the complete KDE application environment (usually not just kdelibs), installed as many times as you have applications, instead of just once, isn't good for the disk space, right?

You made the initial comparison, not me. The daemons aren't a hard problem. I don't have to agree about the disk space, I don't think it's that big a deal as I don't think users mind having more disk space used if it makes applications easier to run and deploy and update.

This isn't Linux, people on OSX generally care more about things just working than being as small and efficient as possible. I have multiple OSX Qt apps installed, none of them tries to share libraries with the others.

> If you work on improving building of self-sufficient KDE applications, that's wonderful work. It is probably possible, and maybe easier than I expect it to be. In the meantime, I will be brainstorming this KDE installer. Maybe only to fill a gap until you guys have figured out how to do it the most beautiful way, while circumventing the problem of the daemons and everything.
> 
> Yes, a self-sufficient .app is beautiful. But in this case: why bother, it's not like the user will notice.
> Yes, interfacing with Fink may be hard. I find it to be a better investment of my time.

Fine, that's your call. The user will notice when Fink updates their package and it breaks your installer. The Fink KDE maintainer thinks this is a bad idea, you might consider listening to him but I'm not going to stop you.

> These are all just trivial problems. The installer will use the existing Fink installation if it exists. It will use /sw like normal Fink packages. It will use a binary distribution with packages in Fink itself (I don't think 'my' packages will divert from Benjamin's packages, can't think of any patches that wouldn't make sense in Fink itself, or upstream). It will not divert from normal Fink procedures such as the -shlibs packages, so there will be no binary compatibility problems.

Again, you're telling the Fink maintainer that his problems are trivial. I somewhat doubt that.

> I'll think this through before I'll really start working on it. This brainstorm has been hugely helpful, but we're just repeating arguments here. I would love it if you continue work on CPack and kdelibs improvements to one day get "real" Mac KDE applications; in the meantime, I will try to work on an installer that works with Fink in symbiosis. We'll tackle the same problem from two sides and maybe we'll meet again in the middle.

No-one is stopping you from making a Fink installer, we're just telling you why we think it's a bit of a waste of effort. It's ok to just ignore us and make your installer, if it works as well and as transparently as you claim then you can say "I told you so".

--
Cheers,
Mike McQuaid
http://mikemcquaid.com