[KDE/Mac] Repository for patches to fix KDE Problems on OS X

[Ian Wadham]

Hello Nicolas,

On 01/07/2014, at 12:51 AM, Nicolas Pavillon wrote:
>> This is to let you know that I have now set up a new project in KDE,
>> with Ben Cooksley's help.  It is is in Playground/Base and is called
>> "Fixes for KDE problems that occur on Apple OS X”.
> 
> Very nice, it will hopefully be quite helpful in tracking down issues. There
> are one or two points where I am not fully clear about how you intend to
> use it. First, to which version do you intend to link the patches?

Yes, I must document that in the repository itself.  Mea culpa.

At the moment, the patches are against KDE 4.13.x, which is to say the
KDE/4.13 branch of the main KDE repositories.

However, the core of KDE 4 has been fairly stable for a while, so they
will probably apply equally well to 4.12.x or 4.14.x or even KF5, where
Marko gives all of our patches a try.

> I expect that changes will occur in KDE code, which may imply then changes (or suppression) of some of the patches. Will you follow the trunk, or do you intend to stick to versions and make incremental changes?

I could follow the trunk (the master branch on git), but I thought it would
be more helpful for you and Marko if I followed a version just ahead of
what MacPorts is providing from time to time.  The kdesrc-build tool can
be set to follow any repository or branch.

> I also noticed that you did not include any of the patches that we for
> example have in Macports. Kdelibs4 contains for instance quite a bunch
> of them. Is it because you do not use them, or because you only include
> patches that are not included there?

The latter.  I have to use all the current MacPorts patches for KDE ports,
otherwise I would experience all the problems they fix.  What I have done
(privately) is to make them commits in my local git repository of KDE source
code.  That way, they keep getting merged in whenever I update from central.

> Either way, I was starting to think that some cleanup (or at least ordering
> and commenting) could be pretty useful in some of our ports, and having
> another repository which includes useful patches is a pretty good incentive.

My ultimate goal is to get all the problems fixed in the KDE source code itself,
so that in the long run there are no more OS X patches, just more bits of
KDE code that say #ifdef Q_OS_MAC or #ifndef Q_OS_MAC or are corrected
at those points.  What happened with https://bugs.kde.org/show_bug.cgi?id=334702
is the ideal.  That fix to KDE build macros themselves allowed you to remove
some "reinplace" fixes from the KDE ports.

It will be a long process, however.  I will not just barge in and start committing
fixes to KDE central repositories, even though I have the power… ;-)  There is
a review process and I must respect the rights of other KDE developers.  The
difficulty is that many of them are now focussed on KF 5…  But many of the
same Apple OS X problems will come up on KF 5 in time - ask Marko… :-)

Of course, there will always be a few KDE patches that are local to MacPorts
because of Apple users' preferences, etc.  But please feel free to use my
humble repository at osx-patches in any way you would like.

All the best, Ian W.