appstream in Plasma

[Thomas Pfeiffer]

On Samstag, 9. April 2016 20:32:24 CEST Martin Graesslin wrote:

> If using a framework requires a workspace component being installed,
> something is seriously broken in our workflows. We have worked a lot on
> making our apps not depend on Plasma, let's not accept a status where that
> doesn't work.

That, right here, may well be the most important argument: If an application 
is supposed to work outside of Plasma, it must work there properly without any 
part of Plasma installed, period.

If an application doesn't, file a bug. If the application team doesn't care, 
then they apparently don't care about their application running anywhere else. 
That's their loss, then, and it's not Plasma's task to fix the situation for 
them.

> > What I have understood so far, systemsettings5 is supposed to be a
> > Plasma-only tool. Given that, we (KDE) are lacking a KCM browser tool
> > suitable for everyone.

We are not. No browser tool for _Plasma_ settings needs to be suitably for 
anyone not using Plasma, because...

> Correct systemsetting is part of Plasma. This means it is meant for use in
> Plasma. No KDE application should depend on a Plasma tool being installed.
> If applications/frameworks are not useable without having Plasma installed,
> that is a bug in the applications/frameworks that needs to be fixed.

...as Martin says: If an application needs a setting, that setting has to be 
reachable from the application. An application cannot assume a specific desktop 
settings applicaiton to be available.
 
> And that is obviously a bug: we cannot expect users to know that they need
> to install Plasma's systemsettings to configure KFooBar.
 
> And I need to point out: making systemsettings available in e.g. GNOME would
> also mean that we need to make sure it's useable in GNOME. This means for
> example adding lots of "Only-Show-In=Plasma" to our configuration modules.
> It's a little bit confusing after all if you open systemsettings in GNOME,
> go to window management, change something and it doesn't change it. And I
> just checked: KWin's configuration modules don't have that entry, they
> would be shown. It would be quite some work to get this configured in a way
> that it is useful for a user on GNOME. Sorry, no, we care about Plasma here
> and not about making Plasma tools work on other DEs. You have all the
> rights to use it, though. Nobody is restricting that right.

Interestingly, GNOME Control Center does provide AppStream data, so it should 
show up in e.g. Discover (it does so for me in Manjaro, at least).
Out of curiosity, I tried installing it in Plasma.
Yes, it's possible. Yes, it runs. Yes, it's completely broken, with only a 
minority of modules (most of them things like user settings which are 
independent of the desktop anyway) actually doing anything.
It's no fun, and as a user, I wonder why Discover even offered me to install 
it from a Plasma session.

Cheers,
Thomas