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List:       kde-core-devel
Subject:    Re: KDE Development Policy
From:       Stefan Gehn <sgehn () gmx ! net>
Date:       2002-03-09 12:52:38
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Moin,

On Sat, 09 Mar 2002 13:03, Dirk Mueller wrote:
> On Fre, 08 Mär 2002, Neil Stevens wrote:
> - the libtool update does _not_ require an operating system upgrade.
>   autoconf is a perl and m4 based package of less than 1MB size in source.
>   compiling and installing it takes less than 5 minutes, it is compilable
>   out of the box on about each and every broken system you can think of.

Many people dislike to install perl-based packages because usually it's hard 
to uninstall them (at least I felt like that with quite some sources using 
perl). That's why people prefer packaged-versions of things like automake 
etc.

>   Furthermore many newer distributions ship it by default anyway.

Not everybody wants to update to a newer distro every half year, I'm just 
lucky to have a new one because I bought a new hdd and reinstalled my whole 
system.
In general backward compatibility is always the better way than supporting 
_only_ the hippest and newset versions.

>   If you upgrade your operating system instead of updating autoconf its
>   your decision and not forced by KDE itself.

If you want a newer package of autoconf you usually have tons of dependencies 
which often lead to updating the whole distro.

> - The build requirements update was a step to do anyway. We simply can not
>   keep the compatibility with autoconf 2.1x and 2.5x over a longer period
>   of time. For my personal opinion, adjusting the build requirements is
>   better done for a major release like 3.0 instead of a "normal" release
>   like 3.1.

Then why didn't that happen somewhere before feature freeze started? Changing 
the build-system is also a feature IMHO.

>   b) maintain an "admin.old" directory with the older checkout for
>      people to download and use. However I almost bet that replacing the
>      admin dir before compiling is even more work than updating autoconf.

Having an old admin-dir in kde-common and make symlinks in every cvs-module 
might be sufficent for developers that cannot currently upgrade their 
automake/autoconf.
I'd vote for a solution like that

> - With the size of KDE and the amount of apps and the amount of users
>   its unrealistic that you will reach the "open bug reports == 0" aim
>   at _any_ time.

But sorting out the problems regarding styles/colours was way too late and 
it's still not finished, at least for me.

The most obvious thing is kicker and kdesktop don't apply new colourschemes to 
their popupmenus, looks funny to have a transparent menu with white text just 
because these damn stupid apps did not set their text-colour to black :/

> The only solution I see currently is providing a "configure" script for
> "make -f Makefile.cvs", that will pick up the "right" admin dir. I will ask
> Stephan and Michael to consider this.

[x] we need that

>   by my "the release coordinator has spoken" - rants. Maybe I was too
>   loose this time, so probably we find the golden way of doing things for
>   KDE 3.1.

Yep, I don't have anything against a real freeze with just bugfixes going in. 
I know it slows down development quite a bit but overall I switched to 
unix/linux because of stability, not because I want the same bugginess as 
under other OS's :)

Stability comes _before_ features, never forget that

> > The justification for these changes was
> > explained very well by the KDE 2.2 release coordinator Waldo Bastian
> > in a mail to the developers (5), in which he said "[Y]ou will have to
> > respect release freezes" if you put your code into KDE.
>
> Hmm, I always tried to express that more gently, but if you find Waldo's
> mail okay, I will quote it in my next regular-rant mail ;)

I like a clear statement like Waldo did as well. It's ok to say "Now stop the 
featuritis and make it work instead".

> > New leadership for KDE 3.1 is needed.

Nah, the "leader" just has to change his strictness a little bit :)

Bye, Stefan aka mETz
-- 
sgehn@gmx.net | ICQ#51123152 | Moege der Pinguin mit euch sein
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