Non-C++ Apps in KDE Main Modules (Was: Guidance in KDE Admin)

[Mark Constable]

On 2008-03-30 10:38, Aaron J. Seigo wrote:
> That's true of every single dependency we have in KDE. Hardly anybody bats an 
> eye when we pull in Yet Another Library, so doing so now is really 
> hypocritical.

Obviously, the difference is that the current KDE dependencies are
mostly C/C++ libraries. Many and varied they may be but they are
generally not interpreter environments.

> > Qt/KDE is pure binary code with minimal interpreter dependencies 
> > and I, for one, do not want to have to install perl, python, ruby, mono,
> > java (yikes! that's 10Mb + 20Mb + 10Mb + 40Mb + 80Mb) and how ever many
> > other scripting environemnts just to run a basic desktop system.
> 
> * Dependencies are handled for you when installing from packages, and simply 
> cause items to be skipped when they are not available. So "more work" is not 
> at issue.

The MB outlined above is download bandwidth, installation is 3 to
4 times that size. Then are we talking about python 2.4 or 2.5 or
maybe 3.0, ruby 1.8.5 or 1.8.6, perl 5 or 6, and on and on.

Sub $100 hardware and sub 100k modem/mobile links may outnumber
1st world PCs in the coming years and C/C++ code is always going
to perform better no matter what hardware baseline is considered.

> * We're not talking about all languages: we're specifically discussing Python.

Fine, then setup a well defined kdepython area in the main repos
and make sure any dependencies for python apps do not leek outside
that area. Then, as a packager, I can easily avoid build, distrib
and support time for anything to do with python. No problem.

Sure, you are specifically discussing python right now but then
it'll be ruby, then...

--markc