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List:       kde-devel
Subject:    Re: What to test for 4.13?
From:       mk-lists () email ! de
Date:       2014-03-15 15:04:24
Message-ID: 575972C3-B87C-4948-AAF6-D9672E5FB535 () email ! de
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Hi Kevin,

On 14 Mar 2014, at 09:46 , Kevin Krammer <krammer@kde.org> wrote:
> I hadn't imagined that a packaging effort for OSX would do that as well. My 
> assmption was that especially on OSX one wouldn't want end users to have to 
> deal with that.
> 
> My obviously uneducated guess would have been that it would be more similar to 
> Windows, i.e. having a single app store like installer that would download and 
> install everything needed by the chosen applications.
> 
> Maybe that is something the OSX packaging community should have a look into.

I have been using Linux and especially KDE since its earliest days. (My first Linux \
was a S.u.S.E. 4.4 and I never gave up on Linux since then. Still I am running a few \
OpenSUSE servers at work, my private laptop is OpenSUSE and my daughter’s as well.)

I.e. I am coming from a Linux background.

4 years ago I got my 1st iMac as a present. I myself would never have bought one, \
because of its ridiculous price! :) I was happy enough with my old Linux machine up \
to then. But then in 2010 I suddenly had this present on my desk and I loved the \
large screen from the first minute on.

BUT, I missed my KDE apps, especially KMyMoney which actually had saved my life back \
then in 2007 or so...

Luckily I heard about MacPorts and on the 2nd day with my iMac I had it up and \
running and had been amazed by the relative ease with which almost all the Open \
Source software I was used to use on Linux could be installed on the iMac! Back then \
they didn’t have the buildbot infrastructure up and running, so everyone was forced \
to build every single port from scratch - just like Gentoo does.

MacPorts allows to install a variety of compilers, unix/linux tools, KDE or Gnome \
apps, … AND many of them are at the tip of development!!! So, e.g. KDE is at version \
4.12.2!!! (My SuSE’s were never as current as MacPorts has been in years.) And, I \
want to underline that the building of almost all KDE4 ports seems to have been going \
flawless in the last while. Which is amazing, given there are almost no KDE core \
developers on MacOSX.

  ===>>> So, stating "we should seriously consider dropping MacOS support IMHO, to \
prevent further discredit being done to KDE” is doing neither side any good! :-) \
Quite the opposite - I think the fact that KDE is still alive on MacPorts is an \
amazing example of what Open Source can achieve and that should be cherished and \
praised - which is what I do herewith. :-)

And I won’t consider MacPorts' installation from sources as a design flaw, it is \
partly just a development state on the way to become an open-source software \
distribution system (not only) for Apple’s MacOSX. If I am not mistaken you can run \
MacPorts also on Linux. :-)

So, in fact the system allows every port maintainer to locally create new ports which \
will eventually checked in through SVN into MacPorts’ port tree, so that the \
buildbots automatically start building them for the currently supported 4 MacOSX \
versions. The buildbots keep the responsible maintainers informed about any problems \
during those builds. This information is then used to investigate further and file a \
bug report on bug.kde.org or at Digia.

Also one has to point out that MacPorts DELIBERATELY does not distribute port \
binaries which use code with a licence which isn’t allowing binary distribution. This \
is good and considerate design in my eyes. 


> > Maybe there are some non-KDE packages which require the libsdl library
> > and they require the +x11 variant, so then everybody gets it.  Just as
> > KGoldrunner gets Nepomuk, et al. … ;-)
> 
> That is a serious packaging problem then.

Yes, it’s hugely difficult to get KDE applications to build without any X11 deps.
Up to a certain point I offered no_x11 and no_gtk variants for KMyMoney, but as Ian \
wrote probably almost no-one made use of them. And those who did did run into trouble \
sooner or later if they installed other KDE or GTK applications.


> Or rather there seems to be a huge gap between the target audience of the mac 
> packaing effort and the people wanting to use it.
> Has anyone pointed that out to them?

Well, their philosophy is: OFFER EVERYTHING for the usual OSX user, as up-to-date as \
possible, so that no-one misses anything later. Back then - when there were no port \
binaries distributed - this would mean hours and hours and hours of building X11 and \
Qt and KDE… A pain to get started with any Qt[34] application, I tell you!


> And is there no packaing community targetting the usual OSX users?

It is!
It’s called MacPorts. ;-)
Seriously, they really do a great job keeping MacPorts itself and all its ports \
going! The community is very active, the developer and user mailing lists are \
responsive (200-300+ posts/month aren't too bad, I think) and the communication is \
always friendly.

Herewith I want to conclude once again that KDE4 is alive on MacPorts. Let’s keep it \
so, together! :-)

Thanks to everyone involved!!!
Greets,
Marko



P.S.: After having written all this, I am not sure if one or two points have come up \
already in other posts, but I’ll leave it as is for consistency reasons.

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