Greetings Jonathan,
Le 2021-04-23 à 05:58, Jonathan Riddell a écrit :
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
<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?
I have trouble understanding the question... would you mind pointing to
your previous discussion of this topic?
By the way, although this certainly matters to the community and is
somewhat topical on this forum, this question is quite technical, and
whether or not you ask here, I recommend you ask on a more technical
forum (such as the kde-devel mailing list) before.
--
Philippe Cloutier
http://www.philippecloutier.com
