Re: Will KDE make it into Woody?
--- Petter Reinholdtsen <pere@hungry.com> wrote:
>
> The current status of KDE in Woody is less then perfect. kdenetwork
> ...
> I'm getting worried that the KDE not will make it into Woody. The
> release maintainer have already started to remove buggy packages from
> Woody, and several of the KDE packages will -- probably -- get new
> bugs registered when they finally compile on all the required
> platforms.
>
> Do I have reason to worry or should I just relax?
I wish to 2nd Petter's question/concern. And, also make a few suggestions.
I don't have time to explain this in the detail I'd like to, at this time, but
in brief:
Chris Cheney,
I, as usual, applaud your goals & effort to pakage KDE for Debian. But, there
is an area in which I conclude your results or values are badly in disagreement
with what I believe the KDE packager should do.
KDE is a _very_ important set of functionality for the free sw community. That
importance sets this packaging job into a whole different category than less
used/crucial packages.
In particular, I believe packaging such an important set of sw carries the
responsibility to be extra communicative to the user community about the
packagers' plans and time estimates (because the unavailability of this sw
affects so many people, and in very important ways). By not being very clear
about what you are intending to do with KDE, and providing a detailed,
realistic estimate of by when you think you will have it done, you are
prohibiting those _many_ people from making informed plans about KDE in their
lives.
The requirement to do this comes out of Part 4 of Debian's
"Social Contract" with the Free Software Community:
4) Our Priorities are Our Users and Free Software
"We will be guided by the needs of our users and the free-software community.
We will place their interests first in our priorities."
In this case, their interest is, more than just having KDE packaged, to be
informed about what & when various aspects of the packaging will occur, so they
can plan properly. (The KDE project, itself, is truly excellent at doing
that.)
As you know, I have posted status requests on this topic several times, [and
you have responded a few times - thanks. :) ]. As I've said before: I'm sure
you're very busy, and I know this will take some (I suspect & hope small) time
and effort. But I really think you should make a post like this at least once
a week.
[Something like: (readers note: I have _no_ idea what the dates & milestones
would really be.)
"Here's what I conclude needs to be done (& by when):
2/25-create the metapackaging scheme
2/28-package the individual metapackages
3/1 -create the kde metapackage
3/2 -alpla test
3/3 -release the packages
3/8 -beta test
3/10-fix bugs
3/11-re-release the fixed packages
..."
]
This will benefit not just the users trying to plan their KDE useage
activities, but also allow others with the ability to contribute to packaging
KDE, or fixing bugs, etc, to know when & where their skills might be needed, so
that they, too, could help contribute to the development & progress of KDE in
Debian.
(There has already been at least one unsolicited offer from someone, in
response to one of my earlier status requests. I suspect, Chris, that there
are others reading this list who'd be glad to help you, if only they knew how
they could.)
Potentially having KDE 2.2 miss being included in the initial release of Woody
would be, IMO, a _very_ unfortunate occurance.
Daniel Stone (and anyone else capable of assisting in the creation of the KDE
2.2 packages): I certainly wouldn't _tell_ you (or any packager) how to spend
your time. But I do stronly provide you my encouragement to, if your abilities
permit, have you devote any time you're putting into packaging KDE 3 for Debian
into doing what you can to ensure KDE 2.2 is ready to be released with the
initial Woody release.
Thanks everyone, and good luck on getting KDE 2.2 packaged for inclusion in the
Woody release. :)
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