KDE packaging

[Jarosław Staniek]

Ralf Habacker said the following, On 2006-12-04 15:55:

> I had been asked some time ago from an online news paper if there are
> already binary packages available and I had to negate this :-( 
> 
> One reason for this is the early state of the port and other reasons
> which should have been discussed. So I like to start such a thread with 
> the hope that we can move a step more into that direction. From my
> knowledge the following packages are required:
> 
> windbus
> kdewin32
> several packages from www.gnuwin32.org
> qt 4.2 with qdbus  (not official supported)
> kdelibs
> kdebase
> kde...
> 
> Currently several packages are only available as source in svn or as
> zip-file, several as binary packages, but in all there are several
> download locations and several access methods (ftp,http,svn) .
> 
> windbus
>     - currently in windbus svn, older source tarballs available
>     - contains required runtime libraries (libxml2.dll, libiconv.dll   
> mingw: mingw10.dll   msvc: ...)
>     - question: would it be possible to release msvc and mingw in one
> package ? Or is it required to release separates packages because by the
> different runtime libraries

Maybe separate them in defferent directories (IIRC, we've also talked about 
having dlls in bin/ all the time and not in lib/?). So maybe we can have 
bin/msvc/ and bin/mingw/. There's no problem with plugins (modules) since 
these can be mixed in one kde4/lib/ directory - these are loaded with a proper 
prefix/suffix dependent on compiler's vendor.

> kdewin32
>     - currently in kde svn
>     - different binary packages required - contains c++ code
>     - released with kdelibs ?
> 
> gnuwin32
>     - binary package available
>     - mingw/msvc support in one package
>     - released with kdelibs ?
> 
> qt 4.2 with qdbus 
>     - source in qtwin cvs, patches in windbus sf project
>     - different binary packages for mingw and msvc
>     - are any trademark issues to expect for making binary packages ?

Linux distros do create binary packages too... there shold be no difference 
under win32...

> 
> kdelibs
>     - source in svn and as tar balls  http://developer.kde.org/source/
>     - different binary packages for mingw and msvc
>     - releases as one big library or should/could it be splitted into
> smaller pieces [1]?
> 
> kdebase
>     - source in svn and as tar balls  http://developer.kde.org/source/
>     - different binary packages for mingw and msvc
> 
> kde...
>     - source in svn and as tar balls  http://developer.kde.org/source/
>     - different binary packages for mingw and msvc
> 
> 
> [1] package sizes for mingw (msvc may differ)
> recent kdelibs binaries without debug informations requires about 61 MB
> on disk - this would be the basic package  (kdelibs-bin)
> development header and import libraries for developing additional kde
> packages requires 42 MB on disk.  (kdelibs-devel)
> debug informations requires about 418 MBytes on disk  (kdelibs-devel too
> or kdelibs-debug)
> 
> Providing more packages as binaries would make it easier for people to
> enter KDE4 user and developer experience on windows and would increase
> the number of people involved into this project as far as I can see.
> 
> Are there any comments ?

my comments, RFC:
- let's consider releasing a runtime package (a minimal set of libs and apps) 
and a development package. The latter can include the runtime;
- for both types of packages let's bundle the msvc and mingw versions together 
or do it at least with the runtimes; a user of the runtime should not be asked 
what compiler was used to build a given app;
- debug files can be an optional package (once kdelibs is stable, not 
required, as IIRC win32 devs are not used to have full debug info of all the 
"system" libs)
- since it's not a good idea of mixing link release and debug code (but we can 
distribute them in one package) can we assume developers will distribute 
release versions of the compilations? Are backtraces available if a user got a 
crash but lacks a development environment?
- the final question: since debug packages will be big anyway, maybe we should 
include the full source code of the libs/apps with debug packages? Thus we 
could decrease a number of packages.

Let's continue noting down these tasks on the kdelibs.com wiki [1]. Ralf, if 
you don't mind I can put there the current (prototype) plan.

[1] e.g. http://www.kdelibs.com/wiki/index.php/Packages

-- 
regards / pozdrawiam, Jaroslaw Staniek
  Sponsored by OpenOffice Polska (http://www.openoffice.com.pl/en) to work on
  Kexi & KOffice: http://www.kexi-project.org, http://www.koffice.org
  KDE3 & KDE4 Libraries for MS Windows: http://kdelibs.com, http://www.kde.org