Re: kde build deps issue?
On Wed, Oct 03, 2018 at 07:58:27AM +1300, Michael Cree wrote:
> Hope you don't mind me CCing the debian-alpha list as it would be good
> to get other eyes seeing the problems.
Not a problem. The second of the two issues you mention would seem to
be the long pole in the tent, as it were.
> There are at least two problems:
>
> #896658 easily fixed, but when I made an account on the upstream bug
> tracker they started spamming me with their product advertisements so
> I am having absolutely nothing more to do with that.
Went to the Debian bug site to have a look-see. Did Lisandro ever file
the bug upstream per your request? The only real issue I see with a
Debian-specific patch is, as has been the case with other large source
packages, a point is eventually reached where it's no longer possible to
apply custom patches. Much better if upstream can make the
accommodation so it can be forward-ported as necessary.
> And their is a much bigger problem: qttools-opensource-src build
> depends on libclang which is not available on many of the ports.
> I get the impression that upstream is not interested in making that
> build dependency optional. I have taken a look at the old Alpha
> back-end for LLVM but there is a substantial amount of work to get
> it building with a recent LLVM. I started this but on realising the
> amount of work still required have had to abandon it. There is a
> possibility of getting clang support without needing an LLVM backend
> but I haven't looked at that, and probably won't be able to in the
> near future.
In case other readers have forgotten an earlier thread, this is an issue
with future "firefox" releases as well -- without LLVM, no "Rust", and if
no "Rust", no "firefox". As far as "firefox" is concerned, unless most
of the people reading this have large Alpha servers with plenty of RAM,
I believe the point of diminishing returns has been reached -- future
releases, assuming they can be built, are probably going to require more
horsepower to run than my puny PWS can bring to the party.
> So my view is, unless someone wants to pick up these issues and
> provide fixes, building kde on Alpha has come to an end.
(Begin tangential rant -- feel free to ignore :-))
Frankly, increased complexity and bloat are a given as time goes by.
There was an article published recently on reasons why this happens,
and at the risk of oversimplifying the author's point, throwing more
resources at an inefficiently-written application is "better" (for some
definition of the word) than spending time rewriting code. Not to put
too fine a point on it, but Moore's Law simply doesn't apply where
legacy iron is concerned.
It probably won't be Debian when the smoke clears, but what about
something like DSL for the Alpha and other legacy platforms currently
dying a slow "death by ant bites"? It's a wondrous thing to behold what
the hardware is capable of doing when the software can get out of its
way :-).
--Bob
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