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List:       kde-devel
Subject:    Re: What to test for 4.13?
From:       Kevin Krammer <krammer () kde ! org>
Date:       2014-03-16 10:07:16
Message-ID: 2651404.q2cj13rgX3 () persephone
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Hi Marko,

On Saturday, 2014-03-15, 16:04:24, mk-lists@email.de wrote:
> Hi Kevin,

> 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. :-)

I didn't mean to imply or suggest that the design was flawed or anything like 
that.
I was just wondering if the group was targetting a different audience. Ian 
wrote something about build dependencies and building which kind of didn't go 
well with my mental model of Mac users.
I hardly know any Mac user who would build software so they would not be 
affected by build dependencies. 

Several postings later my understanding is that Macports do have binary 
packages as well, which would solve Ian's concerns and be more in line with 
what "my" Mac users would be looking for.

> 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.

Right. Doesn't apply to KDE software but certainly the right thing to do in 
the wider scope.

> >> 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.

Any idea why? Most applications should not have any X11 dependency, those 
available on Windows definitely don't.

> > 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!

"usual OSX user" and "hours of building" just don't match in my experience.
"hours of building" and "usual user" doesn't match on any platform I know of.

Hence my assumption that the target audience was not the audience that the 
packaging effort actually catered for.
That assumption seemed to have been wrong with Macports actually having pre-
built software and having building as a separate option.

My updated understanding is now that it is very much like a Linux package 
repository, where users can just install and run the software without having 
to care about building and dependencies.

Basically a FOSS app store.

Cheers,
Kevin
-- 
Kevin Krammer, KDE developer, xdg-utils developer
KDE user support, developer mentoring

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