[PATCH] Making Soprano optional (again) in kdelibs

Wed Dec 30 01:52:17 CET 2009

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On 29-12-2009 23:09, Mike Arthur wrote:
> 
> On 29 Dec 2009, at 23:43, Jorge Manuel B. S. Vicetto wrote:
> 
>> If "common sense" won't cut it, do I need to start a vote, forum thread
>> or something else asking KDE users (I can do it for Gentoo alone) if
>> they are worried/upset about this? Should I ask how many "former KDE
>> users" stopped using it because of the MySQL dep?
>> If you want, I can point you all to the user rants in Gentoo bugs about
>> MySQL dependency for KDE as a whole and amarok as one particular KDE app.
>> Why is it so hard to understand that KDE is getting more and more bloat?
>> By the way, no other distributions / packagers have issues with the KDE
>> dependencies?
> 
> Perhaps you could instead try to defend the decisions of the KDE developers and read the various FAQs stating why a relational database is being used and forward this to your users who are complaining.
> http://techbase.kde.org/Projects/PIM/Akonadi#Why_not_use_sqlite.3F
> This would be a good start to forward people to.
> 
>> As Maciej hinted, you're opening the door for another group of KDE devs
>> later call for precedent to add hard deps on sqlite, postgres or
>> whatever is their favourite DB. Requiring full blown relational
>> databases for a DE is probably a good sign that someone is going in the
>> wrong direction. Again, I can point you to comments by users in Gentoo
>> bugs complaining about this - it's not just "my individual opinion".
> 
> Would you care to elaborate why you know better about the requirements of the PIM applications than the KDEPIM developers? As I stated earlier, feel free to write the code to match the performance and functionality without a database.

I'm not addressing the KDEPIM module maintainers in particular here, nor
am I suggesting I know more about it than the maintainers. I'm talking
about the KDE dependencies on the whole.

> The idea that there will be another bunch of databases required doesn't really apply here as the two applications you've cited both use MySQL, making it more and more likely that any other KDE applications will start to use MySQL too.

Given previous experience in many FLOSS projects, I very much doubt
you'll be able to convince everyone to use MySQL. I suspect the more you
insist on it, the more objection you'll get and more pressure for
alternatives will show up.
In case it isn't obvious, the real issue with using MySQL is that KDE
shouldn't depend on one particular DB implementation as that may only
serve to alienate users of others DBs.

> Another way of looking at it which you perhaps haven't considered is that dependencies are a good things as they are shared, stable code that we don't have to maintain. This means KDE can get better rather than worrying about how to store information on disk. In KDEPIM, for instance, moving to Akonadi and using a database has allowed a lot of code to be removed.

It seems you have misunderstood my comments. I have no objection for KDE
to include dependencies on common, shared projects. My objection is
about the hard dependencies, in particular to add such deps to kdelibs
when they are only required for individual apps / modules.
About my comment on full blown relational databases use, what I mean is
that requiring a user to have a full mysql installation just for a DE is
bad. I can understand using an embedded db (mysql, sqlite or other), but
requiring a user to have a MySQL server running on a desktop doesn't
make sense.

> Your concerns are known already, they were raised loudly when MySQL was first proposed for Akonadi and for Amarok. However, unless you have an actual technical solution to the problem that many of the KDE developers have tried to solve then raising these issues again is just demotivating.

I'm sorry if my comments are received as demotivating, that was not my
goal. What lead me to post to these mls (after months of silence) is
noticing that KDE wants to go further and add another relational
database dep.
Seeing how Maciej's email and patches were received, how some of you
can't see why making such deps optional is important and as a KDE
packager for Gentoo, I'm trying to get you to rethink about KDE deps and
in this case to drop the soprano hard dep requirement.
Two points I get the impression some of you may have forgotten is that
not all users want the complete KDE DE and that some distributions do
not force the complete KDE DE onto their users.

> --
> Cheers,
> Mike Arthur
> http://mikearthur.co.uk
> 

- -- 
Regards,

Jorge Vicetto (jmbsvicetto) - jmbsvicetto at gentoo dot org
Gentoo- forums / Userrel / Devrel / KDE / Elections
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