Mailinglist Archive: opensuse-kde (173 mails)

[Tejas Guruswamy <masterpatricko@xxxxxxxxx>]

On 09/01/10 13:16, Rajko M. wrote:
> Talking about shooting oneself in the foot.
> As explained above, versions are used to have reference to certain build, so 
> that users by simply rolling back to previous version can identify good and 
> bad versions. 
>
> Current repository structure defeats that efficiently.
> Developers have to resort to serious tools that users can't use. 
I understand the problem you are putting forward; at least, unlike some
others, you have a reasoned argument.

But I think the misunderstanding comes from a difference in expectations
of what the openSUSE KDE team is supposed to do.

You are thinking that they should have all recently released versions
from the current major branch of KDE packaged at any one time like
KDE:42, KDE:43, KDE:44. So that it is possible to switch between each
version till you get the right balance of bugs and fixes.

What actually happens is the KDE team has *one* version of KDE packaged
at any one time. The most recent released version in
KDE:KDE4:Factory:Desktop because that is what will go into the next
version of openSUSE and that is what needs work. The KDE team is not
interested in any other version. (Okay, so UNSTABLE gets packaged too,
but that's just automagic). STABLE is nothing but a testing ground for
online updates for the most recent release, no extra work goes into that
either.

> From the KDE's team point of view, then, there are no rollbacks
possible. It's either what came on the SUSE disk or the version in KKFD.
The KDE team is not big enough to maintain packages of multiple versions
of KDE. Despite the current number of repos, only *one* is actually
seeing any real maintenance: KKFD.

KDE:43 (and KDE:42) were extras. People were asking for new 4.3.x when
Factory had already moved on to next major release 4.4.x. The KDE team
doesn't need to care about these versions, they are never going to go
into a release distro. In fact if we look back to last year the original
plan with 4.2.x was simply to never package those versions. No extra
work has gone into them and the expectation was that they would
disappear as soon as they were out of date.

I hope now you can understand why the KDE team is so resistant to
changing the repository structure. The structure is for ease of
development, all the work goes into the same repository all the time. If
we switch to version based repository names both the users and
developers would need to switch repositories every time a new version of
KDE came out.
I know that means that it is not immediately obvious which version is
currently in KKFD but improving the wiki page and information
distribution should help with that.

Although you all seem confused by the choice of repos, in reality it is
only an illusion of choice. The only real choice is between STABLE and
FACTORY.

If you still truly want to change the setup why don't you offer to
maintain a set of KDE repositories specifically for the users, organised
however you like?

As for Backports, Community, Playground it's a *completely* different
issue, please don't confuse them. Those three contain _applications_
that are released separately from the KDE desktop. There is no
versioning that can be applied to them, and there is no overlap with the
KK*D repos.

Regards,
Tejas
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