-----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE----- Hash: SHA1 On Friday 11 July 2003 09:33, Frederick Polgardy Jr wrote: > Obviously this situation arises, and will continue to arise, every > iteration of SIP/PyQt development, given that PyKDE is a pretty > monstrous project, and presumably Jim has a life outside of PyKDE. :) > The problem is that there is a set of users who want the cutting edge > SIP/PyQt stuff, and another set (in which I place myself) who want to > continue to use the complete SIP/PyQt/PyKDE combo until *everything* is > upgraded. > > In the Debian universe, what do you think of the idea of having some > sort of metapackage for each set (or group of metapkgs, taking python > versions, etc. into account)? Or is it already too complicated? :) > I'd guess once the build architecture is fairly well set up, it's not > too hard to maintain, so I'm happy to help in any way I can. It would > be worth it to me to not have to deal with the inconsistencies and > PyKDE "interruption of service" everytime SIP is upgraded. > > Any other thoughts on this? I think it's a problem worth solving > somehow. >
My thought are: The problem really is that right now, PyKDE development is having a hard time keeping up with PyQt/sip development. This is due partly because the maintainer PyKDE (Jim Bublitz) is busy, and partly because the maintainer of PyQt (Phil Thompson) is not. I mean, everyone has this problem of maintaining two or three seperate versions of software as the software goes through major upgrades. That is unavoidable. The problems with sip, PyQt, and PyKDE is that we are going through major revisions quite often at this point, and unfortunately, Jim is not able to keep up with Phil's rapid pace, in addition to the short upgrade cycles. The first solution in my mind is that we need to open up development of PyKDE so that it can keep up with PyQt. This is being done by Jim right now, so everything is good there. The second solution would be to branch and maintain the earlier releases of PyQt and sip. People won't have to upgrade to a new version to get a minor bug fix they need, and so they won't be trapped waiting for PyKDE to come out. This requires more bodies and time, and both seem to be short in supply. It also helps to have fewer versions of sip and PyQt to maintain. A third solution would be a sip 3.7.1 that works with PyQt 3.7.0, 3.7.1, and 3.7.2, if you know what I mean. I think this would alleviate a lot of issues in all three packages. This is a lot of work to implement, even more work to maintain, and probably not a good idea at this point. However, maintaining backwards compatibility is a worthy goal of all software projects. I will add that the barriers I see to people adopting sip, PyQt, and PyKDE are the problems of getting the right versions to play together, while also getting the latest bug fixes. It is outright frustrating at times. I myself stick with the 3.5 supplied with RedHat 8, just so that I can stabilize my development. I think all three suggestions above should help to lower this barrier. These are just my opinions, based on what I have seen and heard. I hope they are challenged and corrected as appropriate. - -- Jonathan Gardner <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> (was [EMAIL PROTECTED]) Live Free, Use Linux! -----BEGIN PGP SIGNATURE----- Version: GnuPG v1.2.1 (GNU/Linux) iD8DBQE/DvGXWgwF3QvpWNwRAg73AKC3cLvgm+Osd0Fj1+lh0E+J0cKz6gCfbah/ BvvUoDD9pxaI5plIfTl5dCc= =Su5X -----END PGP SIGNATURE----- _______________________________________________ PyKDE mailing list [EMAIL PROTECTED] http://mats.imk.fraunhofer.de/mailman/listinfo/pykde
