Hi, I'm the App Stores Support Engineer guy

[Christoph Cullmann (cullmann.io)]

Hi,

On 2022-09-07 11:08, Ingo Klöcker wrote:
> Hi Kate and KWrite people,
> 
> as you may have read on the community mailing list [1], I'm taking on 
> the role
> of App Stores Support Engineer for KDE.
> 
> Aleix Pol wrote:
> "Ingo will be working with the different teams in KDE towards our
> infrastructure getting prepared to have their software delivered to
> the platforms they are targetting. With this, we hope to improve the
> reach of our products to end users and hopefully enable them also to
> make a living with their KDE products."
> 
> You do already publish Kate in the Windows Store and it has got a few 
> nice
> reviews. That's great!
> 
> Here are a few questions I'm interested in:
> 
> a) Where can I find more information about your building and publishing
> process? Who should I talk to in your team?

I think at the moment (at least for all releases I uploaded), I picked 
the latest build
of the stable branch in the Binary Factory.

Then I installed it on my Win10 VM and gave it a "minimal" testing.

Afterwards I did a new submission in the store, like described here:

https://kate-editor.org/post/2019/2019-11-03-windows-store-submission-guide/

(that describes even the initial creation of the product, that is 
naturally not needed)

> 
> b) Are there things you wish the KDE infrastructure would better 
> support with
> regard to building for different platforms and publishing in different 
> app
> stores?

One should always archive the build that is uploaded to the store for 
public download,
that is a thing I often forgot and a manual thing to do.

Actually it would be nice if one could just flag some build as "ok" and 
then
as much as possible would be done automatically.

I assume, given we want to fully convert to GitLab for all stuff,
that would be something for after the binary factory is obsolete.

> 
> c) Are there things in the KDE Frameworks that should be improved to 
> ease
> building for different platforms, e.g. do you patch some KDE Frameworks 
> when
> you create builds for Windows or macOS?

I think all patches are inside the craft blueprints.
I tried to minimize with Hannah and Co. the needed patches.
I guess ATM there are close to none for the Frameworks, beside some icon 
loading stuff.

Unfortunately there are still a lot Qt patches.


> 
> d) Do you want to target more platforms and/or app stores? If yes, 
> which and
> in which order?

For Kate/KWrite it would make sense to:

1) Have KWrite in the store, too, perhaps by having both accessible in 
the same bundle, given otherwise both are rather large things
and the extra KWrite binary is small.

2) Being present in the Apple Store might be interesting.

3) Flatpak/Snap/... does kind of work but IMHO isn't well tested, but 
that might just be my view.

> 
> e) Are there tasks/issues on some task board or issue tracker that I 
> should
> look at?

I think we have some open Windows bugs, but I think they are in the most 
cases rather our own issues we need to take care of.

One generic issue that is yet to be solved is the proper Qt translation 
packaging, at least I failed to finalize

https://invent.kde.org/packaging/craft/-/merge_requests/44

If I am not wrong, this ATM generally breaks the usage of Qt 
translations leading to strange untranslated Qt elements like
some buttons and such in all our apps.

> 
> f) Is this mailing list the right place to talk about this?

I think that will make sense for the Kate stuff.

Given we now have some central person that wants to coordinate the app 
store things,
perhaps for more general things (like the translation issue mentioned 
above) some
more generic mailing list might make sense.

Greetings
Christoph


> 
> Regards,
> Ingo
> 
> [1] https://mail.kde.org/pipermail/kde-community/2022q3/007274.html

-- 
Ignorance is bliss...
https://cullmann.io | https://kate-editor.org