[Kexi] Re: getting kexi 2.x for Ubuntu 9.10 (Karmic)

[Jaroslaw Staniek]

On 1 March 2011 22:24, Tom Metro <tm at vl.com> wrote:

> Thanks.
>
> That's sort of the down side to layering on top of kOffice - lots of
> dependencies.

Well, Kexi does not depend on KOffice (now Calligra) apps. Qt-only
Kexi would be huge, KDE-only kexi would be approx. of the same size.
You can use the together and install together but whether it's
packaged as one, is up to the distribution authors.
Yet we recommend to split properly:
https://projects.kde.org/projects/calligra/repository/revisions/master/entry/README.PACKAGERS

>
> The objective is to use Kexi to create a caller-ID/contact application
> that will run on my desktop, so a VM wouldn't help. I'll either make due
> with the older version, wait until I upgrade, or use a different tool to
> develop the app.
>
>
>> ...you may choose to press the Ubuntu maintainers a bit to
>> backport the software to older distributions more aggressively.
>
> In my experience the Ubuntu developers are typically 1 to 2 versions
> ahead of what's currently released (as they should be), and unless it is
> an LTS release, there's little interest in even releasing bug fixes for
> current releases (which is somewhat understandable, but not the most
> user friendly policy).
>
> For stability sake I'm typically a version behind current, which means
> it can be a long wait before bug fixes are seen (i.e. report a bug in
> 10.4 while 10.10 is current, if you're lucky it gets fixed in 11.4,
> which means the bug fix isn't seen for a year).
>
> I make heavy use of project-specific PPAs for backports, but
> occasionally the dependencies are too extensive to make that practical,
> as is the case here.

Just for Kexi, I see no reason not to backport it, that's why see a
value in contacting the packagers. It may be even unofficial packages
in custom repos, why to care about that... Otherwise we have inferior
platform to windows where most of the apps are monolytic, and thus it
would be even easier to deploy kexi on windows than on linux...

Sad to mention this again: suggesting switching to other app just
because of problem with packaging is a sign of the deployment issue of
Linux.

Once there was nice solution
(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Klik_%28packaging_method%29).

Again, just for Kexi, I see no reason not to backport it: the current
unreleased version of Kexi may be even usable with Qt 4.4.
Other Calligra apps have special needs like improved tablet support
(Krita) or fixes in text layouts (Words), so these have typically
higher version requirements.

-- 
regards / pozdrawiam, Jaroslaw Staniek
 http://www.linkedin.com/in/jstaniek
 Kexi & Calligra (kexi-project.org, identi.ca/kexi, calligra-suite.org)
 KDE Software Development Platform on MS Windows (windows.kde.org)