Hey,
> > While I am studying Debian packaging I like to understand why KDE
> > packaging needs so much effort. For example the LibreOffice package
> > seems almost instantly available as soon as an up-stream release
> > became
> > available. Does LibreOffice need less Debian packaging effort?
> >
> > Well, it depends. On one side I think kde stuff is composed of many
> > more
> > source packages.
>
> Yes, having only one source package helps for testbuilding and
> -installing massively.
>
> > On the other side Rene, the LO maintainer, has been doing a wonderful
> > job
> > in keeping it up to date. Now that this does not means we in the Qt/KDE
>
> Which also involves following upstream and doing packaging changes as
> they are needed so I can just prepare an upload when it's time to do so
> (actcually in many cases for final releases days in advance and at'ed
> for the release time.) and by following every alpha,beta,rc etc.
Well please don't forget KDE has much more software to package, that have very
different needs and dependency chains. E.g. calligra a complete office suite
(like libreoffice), Kontact an email client (like thunderbird), krita a image
manipulation program (gimp),...
That's why it is not fair to compare on application against something more
than 100 applications and the KDE team is round about 5 core people. So the
maintainer/package ratio inside the KDE team is not great.
Packaging KDE stuff is NOT harder than other packaging, but it is about the
amount to package and the people doing this work that makes it slow.
hefee