modular kdelibs: packagers' view

[Sebastian Kügler]

Hi,

(cherry-picking the -- I think -- two central concerns)

On Monday, June 06, 2011 20:22:27 Heinz Wiesinger wrote:
> I can totally see how modularity in code can help there. However, I don't
> quite see why this has to affect packaging.

It doesn't *have_to*, but:

- if the split is not reflected in the packages, those are only available to 
  developers who build everything from source, it also effectively means the 
  individual frameworks become harder to use (too big compared to utility) for 
  3rd parties who are not primarily developing for Plasma systems

- There are basically two camps in the packagers: those who'd like to ship 
  smaller, more modular packages, and those who are fine with one big 
  monolithic thing. Both camps have good points. We can accommodate both by 
  providing separate sets of tarballs, monolithic ones that look like our 
  previous releases (post git move), and split ones that reflect the split out 
  structure and make them easier for separate consumption. I think that should 
  make everybody happy.

> Dependencies are another big issue. KDE has never been very good at
> documenting its dependencies.

This is one of the big things we've done during the Platform11 sprint, we 
intevestigated everything in kdelibs, kdepimlibs, kde-runtime, kde-support and 
kdepim-runtime, documenting their dependencies. (This is necessary to be able 
to split them out.)

Cheers,
-- 
sebas

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