Re: When will KDE and Debian get together?
On Mon, 29 May 2000, Anthony Towns wrote:
> On Sun, May 28, 2000 at 10:04:30AM -0700, Alan W. Irwin wrote:
> [in response to Tobias Peters]
>
> > I can see why neither Debian nor KDE wants to change here, and it is also a
> > practical impossibility for KDE. Unfortunately, that leads to the
> > conclusion that Debian will never distribute the binary versions of either
> > KDE-1 or KDE-2 except in the unlikely event that RMS changes his mind. This
> > leads to your next point which I absolutely agree with.
>
> Or unless the Harmony project [2] succeeds to a similar degree that
> lesstif has and KDE can happily link against it. Or, unless Troll Tech
> folds and Qt becomes BSD licensed [3]. The latter's a particularly
> unfortunate thing to have to hope for.
I agree, these are possibilities as well, but I don't think they will happen
any time soon if at all.
>
> > One current problem for Debian (unlike rpm-based distributions) is it does
> > not have a standard source-package format.
>
> Actually, it does. Debian packages are built from a combination of three
> files: the pristine upstream source (.orig.tar.gz), the Debian specific
> patch (.diff.gz), and the source control file (.dsc). `apt-get source
> -b qmail' for example, will download the source for qmail, unpack it and
> apply the Debian patches, and build it, assuming you have the appropriate
> programs available and so forth.
I think tar.gz, and patch files are great means of source distribution. But
if you read further in what I said, I was referring instead to the
debianized source tree not being standardized. I have a question into Joey
Hess (from the same thread), and I hope his response will hopefully clarify
this side issue.
>
> > I have hope on this issue because with the exception of one correspondent
> > who made it clear that he was completely prejudiced against KDE in any form,
> > the others seemed as reasonable as you on the issue of distributing KDE as
> > source.
>
> Distributing packages as source isn't necessarily desirable: it requires
> a full compilation environment on all machines, it gives newbies a lot
> of options for errors (not having a proper compilation environment,
> having extra libraries that need to be uninstalled while the package
> is being compiled, having bits of the package silently not be built),
> and it introduces a whole class of bugs that are difficult to duplicate
> by the maintainer.
>
> Especially for a large, complex desktop system that caters specifically
> for newbies and the non-technically inclined, it's far from an ideal
> solution.
Possibly. But these are all quality assurance issues that Debian has
historically been excellent at solving. Thus, I think the advantages of
source distribution (in general, not just for KDE) outweigh the
disadvantages.
Alan W. Irwin
email: irwin@beluga.phys.uvic.ca
phone: 250-727-2902 FAX: 250-721-7715
snail-mail:
Dr. Alan W. Irwin
Department of Physics and Astronomy,
University of Victoria, P.O. Box 3055,
Victoria, British Columbia, Canada, V8W 3P6
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