Am Samstag, 15. September 2012, 22:24:45 schrieb Will Stephenson:
In my humble opinion there is now a false dichotomy between 'community maintained' and 'team maintained' - KR49 as community territory and KDF as the homeland of the SUSE engineer. As there is effectively no dedicated KDE (or GNOME if it makes you feel better) team inside SUSE for openSUSE any more, KDF has to be community maintained. Whether that is Dirk doing bits and pieces on his own time, my small parcels of work time, you, Martin, Raymond, Alin, Todd or Nico, we are the openSUSE KDE team.
But we have different goals. Martin wants a rock stable release and warns of regressions. And don't get me wrong, I do see his point even though I do not want to use it. I just don't see the community to create and maintain it or alternatively the commitment by openSUSE to do so. openSUSE people are concerned with the openSUSE release as well albeit not having time to contribute as much as they want to. They enforce the schedule but lack time to contribute – a pretty "funny" situation. Some from the employed "KDE team" seem to work more on other projects or are suddenly away for "more important" work. Not blaming (maybe the management) but just describing my impression. Raymond and Alin AFAIK do not use any stable KDE, maybe not even a stable openSUSE version. I do not use STABLE either but KRxy, i.e. follow upstream, Todd and Nico probably as well. My conclusion is that very few use and contribute to what is stated as the most important target, i.e. openSUSE release KDE version, aka KDF and STABLE. Most follow upstream one way or another and their work just adds to the openSUSE release KDE version as long and if it concurs with the upstream releases.
The aim of KDE:Release:xy repos is to provide packages of the latest upstream stable release, implemented as a snapshot of our development towards the next openSUSE release. What you suggest is the converse of that, but then we can't use KRxy for feature/packaging/new version development without bombarding 'stable upstream release' users with (broken?) updates.
Currently only important upstream patches are added to KRxy in-between upstream releases and apps that are not part of KDE SC updated to stable releases. That's how the official update channel should work as well, updated pnm in order not to annoy upstream etc. Just that it does not happen because backporting and all that double work is needed. If somebody wants to play wild with patches not tested or applied upstream he can create a devel branch of the KRxy package in KDF. Further, KDF might at some point contain betas, KRxy not. KDF might change from one major version to another, KRxy not. So KRxy is far more reliable and predictable than KDF. And KRxy is only left behind after the last upstream bugfix release and if a new stable upstream release is available for openSUSE users. KRxy is the repo which moves forward continuously, i.e. follows upstream. KDF does not. So why would one branch the former from the latter instead of the other way around? Only because of the "openSUSE KDE release". In the end KRxy has to get "unlinked" from KDF at some point anyway, i.e. as soon as the freeze prevents any updates in KDF. If KDF branches from KRxy that problem does not exist and those maintaining KRxy can just go on with their work as usual without having to care about the dos and dont's of an openSUSE release. And I think the current maintenance of KRxy works really well unlike when it was bound to KDF.
The twin-track situation we ended up with just now in 12.2 arises rarely but can be dealt with the same way again (and automated to a greater extent), but there is no need to make it the default. Otherwise this will divert the team's resources away from openSUSE releases and the KDE on those won't be as good.
I'm not sure about that. As lined out on the factory? list, I think that it would be better to not stick to "openSUSE stable" any longer but simply take a snapshot at some point and add KRxy as official update repo. That way all users would benefit from upstream bugfixing and community packaging efforts. If the repo is set to keep some builds instead of just replacing one can even revert in case a major regression sneaked in. "openSUSE stable" is nice in theory but lacks commitment by paid openSUSE employees as you also stated. And IMHO the community contributing to the KDE repos has a different schedule than openSUSE, i.e. upstream. Hence you would force people to work on something they do not use and leave behind as soon as the next upstream release is out. For 12.2 this would have meant to ship KDE SC 4.9.0 and have 4.9.1-.5 as updates as soon as upstream releases them. All time spent on backporting and messing with KDF could be spent on fixing potential regressions. Now you have 4.8 in 12.2. Who of those contributing to the KDE repos uses KR48 or STABLE and hence contributes to it?
I'd suggest making KR49 links to KDF as soon as possible, giving KR49 maintainers rights in KDF and working together there.
I would not want to work on KDF because of the openSUSE schedules. Sven -- To unsubscribe, e-mail: opensuse-kde+unsubscribe@opensuse.org To contact the owner, e-mail: opensuse-kde+owner@opensuse.org