Fwd: icon packaging

[C. Boemann]

----------  Forwarded Message  ----------

Subject: icon packaging
Date: Tuesday 17 February 2009
From: "C. Boemann" <cbr at boemann.dk>
To: kde-packager at kde.org, kde-release-team at kde.org, all at oxygen-icons.org

Hi

[cross posting a bit - please reply to all]

The packaging/repository of icons gives several problems for artists, 
packagers and app developers.

Today the fd definition is shared between tango and oxygen icon sets and 
other icon sets are joining. This is a cool thing as it allows the users to 
choose which icon set they want.

This standarisation also means that many more icons are now shared 
across applications. Different chat apps all use the same icons. Different 
office apps would use the same icons. But this leads to duplication of icons 
and conflicts when both apps are installed at the same time. The ideal thing 
here is only one package that contains all icons.

Today with oxygen icons that repository is kdebase, but that is a problem for 
third party apps that would have to wait for kdebase to be updated before 
they can release in effect tying the apps release schedule to kdebase which 
they don't want.

To remedy this the artists today place some icons in the apps. But apart 
from creating conflicts it also makes it hard for icon artists to keep a close 
eye on the icons - they disappear out of of sight for the artists.

Some of you packagers already extract the icons from kdebase into your own 
package so the proposal I have is not that radical for you.

Simply stated I want the oxygen icons to be moved out of kdebase into it's 
own repository. That repository is then released often (say every week)

Then apps that need icons would only have to wait a week from the icon is 
created to it is available. No more tie in to kde releases. The release of 
kdebase would naturally require a simultanious release of the icons too.

Furthermore this scheme (along with the fd standard) would allow you 
packagers to create a virtual package "icons" that would depend on either 
oxygenicons or tangoicons or any other fd conforming package.

We at oxygen would like to move our repository out of kdebase asap.

The versioning of oxygenicons would follow KDE's snapshot, beta and rc 
numbering, starting with 4.x.60 shortly after a stable 4.x.0 release, and then 
updating about once a week. Point releases in stable branches would need to 
depend on the oxygenicons version at the time. So kde 4.2.2 would probably 
rely on oxygenicons >=4.2.70 or something like that.
 
Opinions?

Best regards
Casper Boemann
Oxygen team member and KOffice coder



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