On Fri, Apr 23, 2021 at 11:58 AM Jonathan Riddell <j...@jriddell.org> wrote: > > KDE's All About the Apps Goal hopes to use modern methods of getting our apps > to users. I seem not to have been clear about what I mean by that so time to > check in and ask again. These days apps (and websites and any software) gets > developed by developers who are empowered to deploy them all the way to the > user through suitable QA. In the apps of KDE apps that means using app > stores (flathub, snap store, appimagehub, microsoft store, fdroid, google > play etc) and integrating the packaging for those stores into the apps repos > themselves and our release tools. > > This is a massive change of culture compared to what KDE has largely done > until now where the packaging and deployment have been separated into often > entirely separated organisations. That does not seem to have served us well, > our software has not taken over the world except by other orgaisations who > have followed these practices, such as KHTML's derivative now being used by > Microsoft Edge. It's not a setup done anywhere outside the Linux distros and > KDE has long aspired to move beyond just Linux distros. > > Our most successful apps have long gone ahead and done this, Krita is now > available on the Epic Games store. It seems strange to me not to want to > emulate that success. Moving packaging into app repos makes it smoother > > Recently I made a minimum viable patch for the KDE Gear release tooling to > bump up the version numbers where those apps have snapcraft packaging files. > However I've been told I shouldn't "overstate the nature of the goal" with an > objection to integrating the packaging into the app repositories. > > https://invent.kde.org/sysadmin/release-tools/-/merge_requests/15#note_205935 > > I've little interest in putting lots of apps into app stores without this > change of culture where app developers take some responsibility for the end > result. It would likely end up with unmaintained apps. > > So would KDE developers prefer the status quo where our packaging is > deliberately separated from our app development? Or can we start with > moving, where appropriate for the teams doing the work, to move packaging > into the app repos and link the apps with the users?
Here's a separate ticket that is relevant to the topic: https://phabricator.kde.org/T14380 I think it's important because it tries to address the same as the MR without the actual technical changes in the way. And for what it's worth, I don't think anyone has disagreed with the general sentiment in any of the many places this has been posted. Aleix
