[KDE/Mac] Re: KDE vs Macports (Was: trouble with snow leopard)

[Mike McQuaid]

2011/1/4 Bernhard Reiter <bernhard at intevation.de>:
> Am Freitag, 31. Dezember 2010 16:50:16 schrieb Mike McQuaid:
>> This is the KDE/Mac list, not the Macports list. The fact that the two
>> are confused and Macports doesn't upstream their patches is an
>> annoyance to those of us who want to try and get KDE working without
>> Macports.

> You could have responded a lot more positive to Ben's question.

You're right, it wasn't Ben's fault so a simple correction without
explaining my annoyance would have been better, I should have linked
him to the Macports bugtracker rather than just saying "not here".
However, I wonder if criticising out my behaviour on a public list
might have not been done better by a private email?

> if KDE applications on Mac shall become a success, I believe that we must
> grow a healthy community.

> I can understand that you feel slightly annoyed that people
> confuse the packagers of Macports with the KDE Mac initiative. Also it would
> be better if some patches from Macports would go upstream (in my
> understanding there are also some patches that should better stay on the
> packagers level.) But this is something that should be solved alltogether
> with Macports and KDE Mac people. If a user comes to any of us, I think we
> should try to help first and then explain some of the finer details of our
> community.

No, I don't agree here I'm afraid. Most of the Macports patches can
and should go upstream, I've been talking with the maintainers and
trying to do this last week.

I think you'd get a similar (but perhaps more polite) reaction if you
posted a bug with installing distro KDE packages on other development
lists, you'd be told to file a bug with your distro rather than
discussing it on list. Those of us who don't use Macports don't want
to be on a mailing list that becomes a Macports support forum. If it's
desirable to have this, perhaps we should get a kde-macports list
instead (but I'd think Macports would prefer if people just used their
bugtracker).

If KDE on Mac is to become a success then there needs to be a team
with a clearer sense of direction than just fixing the latest bug and
people who want to build KDE on Mac applications that appear
completely native to OSX users and work fantastically. We are
basically in an alpha stage currently where you can get the
applications to work but they don't work that well. We need to fix the
technical issues and attract developers rather than users at this
stage as more users just mean we spend more time fixing simple issues
and less time doing actual development.

-- 
Mike McQuaid
http://mikemcquaid.com