Exception for Dolphin - KFileMetadataWidget

[Vishesh Handa]

On Sun, Jan 6, 2013 at 2:21 PM, Frank Reininghaus
<frank78ac at googlemail.com>wrote:

> Hi everyone,
>

Hey Frank


> > This should be fixed.
>
> Actually, I decided to not care about the entire Nepomuk issue any
> more after nobody cared about my repeated statement that I do not want
> this change in KDE 4.10. But now that the build is broken, it seems
> that I have no choice.


> I think that there are two different problems now. The build fails if:
>
> 1) nepomuk-core is found (such that HAVE_NEPOMUK is set in Dolphin),
> but nepomuk-widgets isn't, or if
> 2) nepomuk-core is not found, such that HAVE_NEPOMUK is not set.
>
> I got e-mails from users about issue 2, including a user-supplied
> patch to fix it (see attachment). It replaces the new
> Nepomuk2::FileMetaDataWidget by the old KFileMetaDataWidget if
> HAVE_NEPOMUK is not defined.


I wrote a patch to do the same thing yesterday. I still haven't put it up
on the review board. Is the solution really that hacky? I can't think of a
better alternative.

Yes, it's a hack, but it could be made
> slightly less hackish and include the case that nepomuk-core is there,
> but nepomuk-widgets isn't, and then everything would at least build.
>

nepomuk-widget and nepomuk-core are both a part of KDE SC 4.10, so I don't
think there should be a problem of only one of them existing. Even PIM
depends on nepomuk-widgets.


> The alternative would be to make both nepomuk-core AND nepomuk-widgets
> hard dependencies for Dolphin. In the long term, this might even be
> something to think about because we could then also remove all the
> HAVE_NEPOMUKs from the source (even though the feedback that I got
> shows that some users like to build Dolphin without Nepomuk, possibly
> because they are not using a full KDE desktop and don't want to pull
> in too many dependencies), but adding new hard dependencies this late
> in the release process is wrong IMHO.
>

Of course.


> The third option (revert the patch) is something that even I am not in
> favour of at this point, now that the release delay for the new widget
> has been announced to the public.
>
> Now people will probably ask why I did not notice this problem before.
> Simple answer: I hadn't looked at the patch at all. I was quite busy
> around Christmas and New Year, mostly with real life issues, and saw
> no point in reviewing something that I did not want in KDE 4.10 at
> all, and when the extra RC was announced, I only had a 4" screen,
> which is not exactly suitable for looking at code, and little
> motivation to spend my holiday working on this, because I was quite
> frustrated by how the discussion went.
>
> And to answer the next question: no, I never said that Vishesh should
> ask the release-team about including this in KDE 4.10. Even though
> Vishesh seems to have misunderstood me, my earlier messages
>
> http://lists.kde.org/?l=kfm-devel&m=135601666623890&w=2
> http://lists.kde.org/?l=kfm-devel&m=135601860424533&w=2
>
> only mention the release team in response to the statements "At the
> end, it's your call" and "Anyway, it's your choice". What I meant was
> that even if I agreed (and I listed enough good reasons for not
> agreeing IMHO), the change still couldn't go in unless the release
> team agreed as well.
>
> So I was quite surprised by Vishesh's request here, but I still tried
> to write a polite answer that shows appreciation for the work of
> others, because that's how I like to communicate (even though I now
> see that simply saying "no" might have been better):
>
> http://mail.kde.org/pipermail/release-team/2012-December/006624.html
>
> But at least my later message was clear, I think:
>
> http://mail.kde.org/pipermail/release-team/2012-December/006630.html
>
>
Perhaps I've been a little short sighted over here.

I really wanted to get the widget in cause of its very obvious benefits
which I've mentioned earlier. Maybe cause of that I overlooked your firm
"no" as a "no - cause you're too late and we have rules". I thought that if
the rules were the only reason, an exception granted by the release team
would be alright.

Even in the later email - I mostly focused on how you felt that it wouldn't
get tested enough. The email mentioned how there would be excessive bug
reports and angry emails from users. I thought that the additional RC and
increased awareness addressed those concerns.

I didn't think that you would still disagree after the issues raised had
been addressed. I was obviously wrong.

If possible, I would like to know why you still felt that this shouldn't
have gone in? Is it just cause of the lack of testing?


> Please note that I'm not blaming anyone for anything here, I'm just
> trying to answer the obvious question "why did the maintainer not
> notice this before?" in advance.
>
> I'm sorry if this message is considered offensive, but I'm seriously
> fed up with the way Nepomuk repeatedly broke things in the last years
> and caused extra work for everyone.


Last years?


> I'm still willing to collaborate
> constructively with Nepomuk and Vishesh in particular, but IMHO, the
> way Nepomuk interacts with the rest of the KDE community has to
> change.
>

Please note that I've only recently (last 6 months) taken up
maintainer-ship of Nepomuk. I thought I was doing a decent job - maybe I've
only been focusing on the technical aspects. It would be nice if someone
could gently prod me in the right direction.

For one - I will try to abide by the higher quality standards and get
everything in well before the release date. This entire process of getting
in the new widget has been fairly eventful, and while it might be an
improvement for the users, it has caused a lot of strife between the
developers.


-- 
Vishesh Handa
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