[KDE/Mac] Hi (from Kolab Client "Team", part of)

[Bernhard Reiter]

Hi Mike,

Am Donnerstag, 19. August 2010 15:02:28 schrieb Mike McQuaid:
> It's cool that there is a commercial effort ongoing on this front and I'd
> like to help here if I can.

good to read you here! 
(Just so that our other readers know: Mike works for KDAB now. KDAB is a 
partner company to Intevation. In my last email I was mentioning a contract 
Intevation+KDAB+g10code were working on in 2008 and 2009, that had a small 
KDE on Mac OS component.)

I guess I have to clarify the "commercial effort" aspect some more:
We are professionals and in 2008 and 2009 we had a paid project to advance KDE 
on Mac a few steps, which we did. Currently we have no contract to do so
and no working business model. There are a few people inside our companies
who would like to run Kontact on Mac and they might put in a bit of their 
time. There is a small business interest for all three companies and Kolab 
System  to have a full blown Kolab Client on Mac OS and thus possibly a small 
time investment into a future working business model. However this would mean
we are getting or having the prospect of getting paying customers or a 
customer that finances stabilizing Kontact and its packaging on KDE.

> Did you manage to read the packaging discussion thread (titled "Developing
> KDE on Mac")? 

I've seen, but not fully digested it yet. I'll hope I'll get to it soon,
feel free to ping me again if that takes too long.

> I raised some concerns there that I'd like to raise with you: 
>
> - There's a few people doing work on this but we're all taking different
> approaches and not discussing it on the mailing list. Specifically, you and
> Sjors seem to have the same approach but one of you is using Macports and
> the other Fink.

I agree we should select a sync point. I'd say we use the mailinglist until we 
have something better. This is why I've send my post here.
(From aboe it should be clear that I cannot promise that much work is done.)

> - There are too many patches in Macports/Fink that really should be
> upstream in trunk and the release branches.

Without know the details or the affected patch numbers:
Naturally the best place for a patch should be sought and this is has high
as possible. Packaging changes could be kept in a place
close to the packaging as well. My experience from other initiatives also 
let me believe that if we want to get a product released that can be 
stabilized, we often need the ability to put in further patches because
that usually takes less time.
And getting something out is very important to grow the community.

> - As a result of the patching, KDE on Mac basically doesn't work without
> using these patches. This seems a bad situation to me and I think that the
> port has stagnated somewhat due to this.

Putting patches upstream includes them into upstream maintenance, so it is a 
good thing. But this is not magic. IMO we should set up nightly builds
or Kontact Tag builds to let the other KDE developers know when they break 
something on Mac.

> - Most non-technical OSX users expect a .app bundle distributed in a .dmg
> and using Sparkle for updates. CPack provides the capability for fixing up
> the dependencies in a .app bundle and creating a DMG.

During the contract we found out that our effort is not large enough to fully 
solve the binary, source and update distribution mechanism of a full blown
product on Mac OS X. So we wanted to join the initiative that is closest
about solving this, including the dependency management for Free Software 
on Mac OS X. MacPort seemed to be the best solution at that time according to 
an analysis by Emanuel. This could have changed over the last 9 months or so.

Best,
Bernhard

-- 
Managing Director - Owner: www.intevation.net       (Free Software Company)
Deputy Coordinator Germany: fsfe.org. Board member: www.kolabsys.com.
Intevation GmbH, Osnabrück, DE; Amtsgericht Osnabrück, HRB 18998
Geschäftsführer Frank Koormann, Bernhard Reiter, Dr. Jan-Oliver Wagner
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