Package: qtlocation-opensource-src source
Version: 5.11.3+dfsg-2
Packaging of QtLocation excludes Mapbox GL plugin. Originally, it was enforced by the presence of JSON-licensed code. These days, while LICENSE.md does mention JSON-license, we could not find any code that would be licensed with it.
As a developer, I would expect that all its parts (or open-source parts) are available
on the platforms that package it. So, when I want to run a code that is
calling Mapbox GL plugin, it should be possible if QtLocation >= 5.9
is packaged. Currently, these expectations fail in Debian and related distributions.
While discussing Mapbox GL as a part of QtLocation, we have to keep in mind that, at this moment, QtLocation is using qt-staging branch of Mapbox GL. Hence, the discussion would have to be related to that particular branch.
The issues pointed out by Debian maintainers are:
- large number of dependencies bundled with Mapbox GL, see deps/ in source code
- incompatibility in qt-staging and master branches disallowing to cherry-pick bugfixes
- lack of manpower to maintain such large package
References:
Related discussion in debian-qt-kde list, main emails: