State of Proposal to improving KDE Software Repository Organization?

[Ben Cooksley]

On Tue, Jan 19, 2016 at 8:27 AM, Boudewijn Rempt <boud at valdyas.org> wrote:
> On Mon, 18 Jan 2016, Friedrich W. H. Kossebau wrote:
>
>> Reason that I ask is that due to the split of Calligra into several repos
>> (see background^) the layout in the repo structure does no longer properly
>> reflect the project organisation. Right now there are three active repos in
>> the calligra/ repo substructure:
>> "calligra" at "calligra/"
>> "krita"    at "calligra/krita"
>> "kexi"     at "calligra/kexi"
>
>
> What I'm wondering is, where is this "structure" actually visible? Not in
>
> https://quickgit.kde.org/

Quickgit shows the raw git repository structure, which deliberately
does not include the tree in it.

>
> or
>
> https://phabricator.kde.org/diffusion/

Eventually we'll have projects for each broader category (Multimedia,
Graphics, etc) and repositories will be tagged for those.
Phabricator will never provide a repository tree though (nor should
it, the existing tree is a hell of a maintenance nightmare).

>
> I see it reflected in the old, to be discarded
>
> https://projects.kde.org/projects
>
> But where else? And what is it actually needed for?

The build metadata depends on it, and it is used by:

- The CI system
- API / LXR / EBN
- Scripty.
- kdesrc-build

>
>>
>> (("calligra" at "calligra/" confuses at least kdesrc-build, sent an email
>> to mpyne about if moving it to "calligra/calligra" should fix it.))
>>
>> Things that are not properly matching organization:
>> * Krita starting with 3.* no longer is part of Calligra project
>>  (screws e.g. api.kde.org/bundled-apps-api/calligra-apidocs/ and also
>>  what people think to which project Krita belongs)
>> * Calligra & Krita are nowhere different to KDevelop, Digikam & Co,
>>  so no reason to be in a complete own toplevel structure,
>>  rather should be in the same sub structure, i.e. "Extragear",
>>  like extragear/calligra/* and extragear/graphics/krita
>>
>> More, not only Calligra & Krita related:
>> * "Extragear" is an awful grouping name for apps with individual
>>  release plans, a legacy term that no longer fits most of the apps
>>  in that substructure
>
>
> It's ghastly -- almost insulting. It's perpetuating the fallacy that
> there are core KDE projects and peripheral projects.

I agree. Which is why i'd like to see the Extragear moniker dropped.
If repositories are part of some broader release unit (like KDE
Applications - even if this does have a better name) then they still
need to visible as belonging to it though I think.

>
>> * "KDE Applications" is a misleading grouping name for apps with a
>>  central release plan, as if those with individual release plans
>>  are not "KDE" applications (as in, not done in the KDE community)
>
>
> Horrible as well.
>
>> * a single category per app as needed by the current tree structure layout
>>  of the repos, like "office", "graphics", "utils", is rather awkward,
>>  many apps do not match exactly one or would match multiple categories
>
>
> Honestly, the need to group repositories is, to me, so weird that I think it
> would be best to adopt the following scheme:

Note that "Frameworks", "KDevelop" and "KDE Telepathy" are all fairly
logical groupings of repositories (and things would be completely
unmanagable in so many ways if we didn't have these).

>
> a/amarok
> a/...
> ...
> c/calligra
> g/gcompris
> k/krita
>
> And so on. It's meaningless as it is; it would be better to make that clear,
> if grouping is really needed.
>
>> So IMHO some update of the repository organisation would be good, to
>> reflect how things are these days.
>> Renaming of "Extragear" and "KDE Applications" is surely something which
>> needs care from promo/marketing/VDG people first to find if that makes sense
>> at all and what a good solution would be.
>
>
> That again begs the question: where is the "organization" which apparently
> has
> purely technical reasons visible to contributors and users?
>
>> (Being both maintainer of Okteta, which is in "KDE Applications", and
>> meta-co-
>> maintainer of Calligra, which is not, but still done in the very same KDE
>> community, that current naming seems so wrong to me).
>>
>> But the actual names and grouping aside, for the pure technical renewing
>> (which also involves all infrastructure like translation system,
>> documentation, phabricator, etc), who is currently planning or working on
>> what?
>> So does it makes sense to wait some more, or should we assume the current
>> organization stays for longer, and Calligra & Krita repos should be moved
>> inside that organization for now?
>>
>>
>> ^Some background about Calligra repo split, as things are slightly
>> complicated:
>>
>> KRITA)  The "krita" repo was split off, because Krita has finally become a
>> full project of its own, separate from Calligra. A logical place for the
>> krita repo in the KDE repo structure would perhaps have been somewhere in
>> extragear, but at least due to the translators preferring to keep the string
>> catalogs of Krita in the "calligra" module as before, for less work, the
>> krita repo was for now put as submodule of "calligra/".
>>
>> KEXI)  Kexi continues to be part of the Calligra project/subcommunity, but
>> the Kexi developers preferred a small simple repo "kexi" of their own (for
>> build time and size). So the placement at "calligra/kexi" makes perfect
>> sense.
>>
>> OTHERAPPS)  As the other Calligra apps (Braindump, Karbon, Sheets, Words,
>> Stage, etc.) are more tightly coupled and the binary interfaces between
>> libs, plugins & apps can still change every other week, for now no further
>> repo splitting is planned (to ensure atomic commits on API changes), and
>> they all stay in the existing "calligra" repo.
>>
>>
>> Cheers
>> Friedrich
>> _______________________________________________
>> Krita mailing list
>> kimageshop at kde.org
>> https://mail.kde.org/mailman/listinfo/kimageshop
>
>
> --
> Boudewijn Rempt | http://www.krita.org, http://www.valdyas.org

Regards,
Ben