Date: Fri, 27 Oct 2017 17:51:43 +0200
From: Natanael Copa <ncopa@alpinelinux.org>
To: Oliver Smith <ollieparanoid@bitmessage.ch>
Cc: alpine-devel@lists.alpinelinux.org
Subject: Re: [alpine-devel] KDE Plasma packaging in Alpine
Message-ID: <20171027175143.63245c69@ncopa-desktop.copa.dup.pw>
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On Thu, 26 Oct 2017 18:57:00 +0000
Oliver Smith <ollieparanoid@bitmessage.ch> wrote:

> Dear alpine-devel,
>=20
> two derivatives of Alpine Linux, Ad=E9lie and postmarketOS, are working on
> getting KDE Plasma upstreamed for Alpine. From the discussions in
> #alpine-devel, it seems clear that Alpine developers are not against
> including it and both groups are currently working together on
> upstreaming KDE Frameworks Tier 1[1] (which is basically the first group
> of packages, that makes sense to be upstreamed before the next group
> etc.).

I am very happy to see that people find Alpine useful for derivative
work. I want try my best to make things easier for both as much
possible.

> However, Ad=E9lie needs the LTS version (which makes sense to ship a
> stable experience for desktop users), while postmarketOS needs the
> latest stable (because plasma mobile[2] is still in development and
> depends on that). For some context, I'm involved in the latter
> project.

I am more worried about the maintenance work that the initial work
adding new stuff. We ship stable releases and provide bug fixes and
security fixes. To reduce the workload I would think that it makes more
sense to try aim for LTS releases.

> This topic came up in #alpine-devel yesterday, and we were told, that
> we should take this to the mailing list to get more opinions from
> Alpine developers, especially from ncopa.

Thank you for bringing it up. This is sort of a classic problem of
conflict of interest: you have some users that want latest and greatest
features and you have users who wants stability and rock solid.

This the reason why we do the stable releases every 6 months. People
who wants latest and greatest can use 'edge' and people who wants
stability can use stable branch.

I looked at the KDE release history[1] and it looks like:

- current LTS is 5.8 (from October 2016)

- latest stable is 5.11 (October 2017)

- next planned LTS is 5.12 (January 2018)

We have a 3.7-stable just around the corner and I think it may make
sense to wait with the KDE stuff til after the 3.7-stable release and
branch, unless the KDE 5.8 LTS is in a state where it is ready to merge.

Would it make sense to aim for KDE 5.12 for alpine v3.8?

I think I would prefer that.

> The question is: Does it make sense for Alpine to ship both versions?

We ship a main/nodejs (LTS) and a community/nodejs-current.

We ship a testing/firefox and a community/firefox-esr

This adds some extra maintenance work so I would really like to avoid
it if possible.

> In theory we could implement this by shipping the latest greatest
> packages with a "-current" suffix. But then again, KDE Plasma is not
> that small and means quite a lot of maintenance effort. The derivatives
> would maintain the packages, but for a package or update to land in
> Alpine, Alpine devs need to review and approve them, so this means
> additional work for Alpine, too.

I don't think it is realistic for us to maintain both. We simply don't
have resources for that.
=20
> In case the answer to the question above is "no, let's do LTS only!",
> kaniini suggested yesterday, that it could be possible to use Alpine's
> building infrastructure to provide builds for the "-current" versions as
> unsupported packages. I would also be very interested in opinions
> regarding that statement. (Related alpine-infra post[3].)

I want help if we have the resources. I'll followup in that thread.

Thanks!

-nc

>=20
> Thanks for reading!
> Oliver Smith
>=20
> [1]: https://github.com/alpinelinux/aports/pull/2495
> [2]: https://plasma-mobile.org/
> [3]: https://lists.alpinelinux.org/alpine-infra/0184.html
>=20
>=20
>=20
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