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Re: KDE3 - Debian/experimental distribution proposal (was: yes i am alive ;)



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On Sunday 13 October 2002 12:53, Mark Purcell wrote:

Hi Mark,

well, as much as this would work out, someone has to do the work actually. And 
regarding the experimental distribution - that brings your work environment 
to a highly unstable state, not to speak about the packagers having to build 
the packages on this system.

Now, let's please be reasonable about what can be done easily and what is 
desireable. Have a quick look at the current state:

- - KDE 3.1 has entered message freeze. The RC's are not too far away now, so we 
should better take care of fixing remaining issues and completing 
installation routines (this is what chris, bab, dpash and I do now). 

- - KDE 3.1 beta2 is a different story. If yenar wouldn't have provided his 
build, then there would have been none at all. From the user perspective I'd 
say, oooh too bad, why did those packages disappear ? From the developer 
perspective, I say, well, this build wasn't done correctly anyway because it 
did't take the tag that was used for the beta but has been a CVS checkout 
shortly after the beta and was compiled using qt-copy from CVS which was 
qt-3.1 beta 1 at that time, which was known to be binary incompatible to 
everything else. So, sorry to say that, but I just uploaded yenar's build to 
ftp.kde.org because I thought, better this build than no build. The ftp 
admins have taken the version down due to the many complains about the apt 
line whatsoever. The result is, if something is provided as-is especially for 
a beta and everyone complains, the stuff is taken down unfortunately. Nobody 
had the time to fix this, so here it went.

The other thing is what version of Debian users want to run KDE on. I myself 
would prefer woody, although testing and unstable are fine, too. That's why I 
think I would like to continue doing those two builds until I've set up yet 
another system that can handle a testing build. Both of them are moving 
targets though, much more than woody (obviously). So, a continuous usable KDE 
build makes sense on woody the most, that's why I would stick to keeping the 
quality there while at the same time from the packager perspective providing 
debs for unstable will give us a nice feedback about the status of what we're 
doing. Just uploading and building requires time and energy that one 
sometimes better puts into fixing stuff than providing debs for bleeding edge 
geeks like we are.

My idea would be better to create a debian.kde.org website to collect all this 
information and to host a permanent official build on ftp.kde.org. That can 
be the releases as they are plus additional applications that are provided 
for those builds. We can sort those in into ftp if we like to, and that is 
the easiest way to provide people a one-liner for their sources.list to 
update regularly.

Other than that, after that is done someone is needed to volunteer for 
rewriting the Debian documentation part in the KDE documentation system, have 
a look at KHelpCenter yourself :-)

Comments ? Ideas ? Or is my proposal just wishful thinking from a KDE 
developer perspective ? :-)

Ralf


> On Sat, Oct 12, 2002 at 02:05:38AM -0500, Chris Cheney wrote:
> > Feel free to reply to this thread regarding any ideas on cleanups, or
> > anything else related to packaging.
>
> There seems to be a lot of confusion about Debian and KDE3 and I think
> most of it stems from not having a standard consistent location were people
> can find the Debian KDE3 debs from. While we don't want to pollute
> Debian/unstable with non gcc-3.2 KDE3 packages, we also aren't building
> and managing the Debian KDE3 packages in a coherent fashion.
>
> Enter the Debian/experimental distribution, which is a perfect place for
> the various Debian KDE3 package maintainers to coordinate their packages:
>
>           The packages with this distribution value are deemed by their
>           maintainers to be high risk. Oftentimes they represent early
>           beta or developmental packages from various sources that the
>           maintainers want people to try, but are not ready to be a part
>           of the other parts of the Debian distribution tree. Download at
>           your own risk.
>
> For example over the last few months if you were on the ball you knew
> you could chase up and around the following locations to get a hold
> of a 'full' KDE3 suite of Debian packages:
>
> people.debian.org	# Various additional KDE maintainers such as myself
> kde3.geniussystems.net	# Seems to come and go, but it currently has
> 			some 3.0.8 deb's up!
> shakti.ath.cx		# Karolina's great but different work with 3.0.8
> download.uk.kde.org	# Linked to official KDE release, current best
> 			source for 3.0.4, had some 3.0.8 for a while but
> 			then they went again :-(
>
> plus there are mirrors of all of the above sites in various states of
> completion and many mirrors are lagging synchronisation by a couple of
> releases.
>
> So if I'm a user and want to have these various packages I need an extra
> couple if not 4 or 5 different apt/sources lines included. If I'm one of
> the many other KDE3 package maintainers (which I am) I have a real problem
> deciding which fork of the above I should build my packages for which I
> then upload to people.debian.org.
>
>
> My proposal is that Debian KDE3 maintainers use the Debian/experimental
> distribution for the coordination of Debian KDE3.
>
> This has the advantages that these packages then become a part of the
> Debian distribution/ mirrors but are flagged as being 'work in progress',
> other Debian KDE3 developers know what the current core is and can
> work to uploading complementary packages to a known state and location.
> All Debian developers are able to upload their packages to the experimental
> distribution by indicating this in the package debian/changelog.
> Once the gcc-3.2 transition is developed then this can be the appropriate
> time to move KDE3 from experimental to unstable.
>
> Mark

- -- 
We're not a company, we just produce better code at less costs.
- --------------------------------------------------------------------
Ralf Nolden
nolden@kde.org

The K Desktop Environment       The KDevelop Project
http://www.kde.org              http://www.kdevelop.org
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