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List:       koffice-devel
Subject:    Re: Google Online document Plugin for KOffice
From:       Boudewijn Rempt <boud () valdyas ! org>
Date:       2010-07-05 7:51:59
Message-ID: 201007050951.59569.boud () valdyas ! org
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On Monday 05 July 2010, Thomas Zander wrote:

> 
> I respectfully disagree that putting up a dedicated area for not-yet-ready
> plugins is splitting the community. Its doing the opposite, its pulling in
> the already split community back into one.

I don't see how telling people to go away to a playpen because their code ise 
not good enough is pulling people together. We should be one team, not two. 
Besides, it's the author's job to decide what is good enough or not. Not your 
job, not mine. It's not that what goes into KOffice trunk is always done 
either. Look at your own text-on-shape patch: it completely missed the "it can 
save what it shows" criterium. And the same holds for most of our 
applications, if you look at them objectively.

> Having a dedicated playground for koffice plugins is surely a big step up
> as I counted 3 koffice plugins spread over 2 servers and also because of
> the other reasons that I wrote in my other mail.

I think all of them should have been in trunk from the beginning. Not having 
them in trunk causes them to bitrot. I think some of them weren't in KOffice 
because they also depended on some other KDE module and needed to track svn, 
instead of being able to use released versions. That's a good reason for 
having a plugin somewhere else. If that's not the case, there's no good 
reason.

> Having a dedicated area for koffice plugins is what Plasma is doing and
> they have a really good track record for growing their community.

I don't think these projects are at all comparable. And we have a bit of 
experience with having a separate area for plugins that don't fit the vision 
in Krita. The result is exactly the same bitrot we saw for KOffice plugins 
spread out in KDE's svn.

> I spent yesterday pulling in those 3 projects and none of them just
> compiled. Mostly due to changes in KOffice API. I made 2 of them compile,
> the 3rd I'll get to soon.

Better move them to koffice/plugins when they are done. Then everyone can see 
them and help maintaining them.

> I'm asking the KDE sysadmin guys if a new project can be created on
> git.kde.org so everyone can just push to that without setup issues.

Sorry, that is not your decision to make. There should be agreement on 
changing the way the KOffice community works, and that agreement has not been 
reached.

And there are too many unknowns here: there's no way to move a plugin from a 
git playground repository to koffice trunk without losing history -- so do 
those plugins stay there indefinitely? Is it a staging area or a final 
destination? All those things need to be discussed and agreed upon before 
starting it.

> I invite Mani and others (Robert Marmorstein?) to start using it

Well, not only has Mani been involved in KOffice for a long time already, he's 
got a KDE svn account, so he's in every respect the equal of everyone else in 
KDE (or KOffice). He can commit any plugin to koffice trunk he wants. He did 
the work, he gets to decide.

> and more
> experienced koffice developers to compile and install it on a regular
> basis.

My counter proposal is: everyone with kde commit access can commit a plugin to 
koffice/trunk. If the plugin isn't done when we release, we will disable it in 
the release branch. This will cause: less work for everyone, more eyeballs, 
less bitrot and a more natural expansion of the community. This is just like 
we've been working now, and I think it's fine. I consider the KOffice plugins 
that were spread out around in the KDE svn mistakes that shouldn't happen 
again. 

When we move to git, of course, we will create a new development process, 
optimized for git. But that can only happen if all of KOffice moves to git.

-- 
Boudewijn Rempt | http://www.valdyas.org

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