Hi Kevin, On 14 Mar 2014, at 09:46 , Kevin Krammer <kram...@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. >> Visit http://mail.kde.org/mailman/listinfo/kde-devel#unsub to unsubscribe <<
