On 08/30/2014 04:01 PM, Felix Miata wrote:
Given all the recent comments from David Rankin on the opensuse English support list, and others here and elsewhere, I fear the practical cutoff point was already reached by the time 13.1 release was announced.
Here is where I disagree. I have done much to coordinate with Serghei, Ilya and TDE over the past several years. I see benefits in both. I think that opensuse/kde3 has taken the right approach to continuing kde3 with original sources and patches. TDE implemented a TQT application layer to provide a path of Qt3-Qt4 transition and avoid name collisions -- but that introduces a whole new level of complexity/incompatibility with existing applications. (that has stabilized, but the renaming effort drained a majority of the development resources for that project that could have gone elsewhere) Here, to make the builds more manageable and set kde3 up to move forward, it would make sense to draw a line in the sand and bring all maintained kde3 sources current at some point (incorporating all patches, call it 3.5.11) and go forward from there. That would eliminate build looking like: kdebase3-runtime-3.5.10.1-361.1.x86_64.rpm (build 361) The other need is to get the latest Qt3 from TDE (they are upstream now). TDE maintains Qt3 and creates TQt3 from the base Qt3 code. That would allow us to take advantage of the fixes in Qt3 beyond the current 3.3.8c. (I believe current is 3.3.8e)
IMO the reason so few people are contributing to openSUSE's KDE3 is because upstream KDE3 was forked, and many resources outside of openSUSE that might have kept KDE3 as KDE3 alive and kicking have been diverted to the fork. Since the fork is provided for openSUSE releases as well as other major distros, it seems like devoting resources to KDE3 amounts to a pointless dead end. It seems the only reasons to continue with KDE3 instead of the fork has to do with some combination of:
The real reason it struggles, not naming names, is that the kde4 team went to great length to kill kde3 to drive users to kde4 back in 2011 - even to the petty point of stripping most kde3 resources from the kde.org site. However, the two primary code bases (the original patched kde3 source, and TDE) are not mutually exclusive. They can benefit one another with direct one-to-one patch sharing, etc. (I do agree that the fork and renaming wasted a LOT of effort that would have been much better spent on a continuation of the kde3 code) It is not so much that it was wasted or spent in a wrong direction, but rather that the goals of the project have changed from what was originally envisioned leaving lots of the initial decisions and renaming effort less critical to what the code is now. It's arm-chair-quarterbacking at this point. Would things be done differently today if the project were started now knowing what we know now -- sure..
1-not having the fork available directly through openSUSE's own repositories
2-relative sloth of the fork's repositories It is a git repo 3-relative sloth of updates getting into the fork's repositories I have passed all critical updates from TDE to opensuse/KDE3 - sftp, etc.. 4-relative sloth of the fork's web docs Darrell Anderson has done wonderful work on KDE documentation. All documentation works in TDE. What is needed is the incorporation of the path changes so that existing kde3 documentation works in kde3 (most of it is there, there are just
We NEED 3.5.11 (3.5.10 + current patch set) to work from. path problems that make parts unavailable) Unfortunately, a majority of the documentation effort went into K->T renaming and reworking of images. The original kde3 documentation can work fine.
5-not available from openSUSE installation media (something else is required to set the stage for installing the fork 6-inconsistent accessibility of the fork's repositories (few/no mirrors, excessive downtime)
NAICT, all KDE3's own virtues remain in the fork, plus the fork gets the fixes required to work with the evolving foundations, such as systemd and the myriad of changes systemd has caused to X.
I have Trinity (the fork) installed on a couple of test systems, and expect at the time I'm finally forced to give up on Evergreen and move to 13.1 on this 24/7 system that I will choose TDE instead of KDE3. Possibly that may ultimately mean skipping over 13.1 to 13.2, though with the plan for 13.1 to become the next Evergreen I expect not.
https://www.trinitydesktop.org/wiki/bin/view/Documentation/OpenSUSEBinaryIns...
We need to continue kde3 for opensuse. TDE pulls in TQt3 which adds an additional level of complexity that doesn't add anything at the moment. In the event that TDE incorporates Qt4/5 through TQt, then a move to the fork is advisable. -- David C. Rankin, J.D.,P.E. -- To unsubscribe, e-mail: opensuse-kde3+unsubscribe@opensuse.org To contact the owner, e-mail: opensuse-kde3+owner@opensuse.org