KDE Sub-Packaging Approach on Fedora

[Rex Dieter]

Hugo Cisneiros wrote:

> I have just submitted a blog post on this:
> http://www.devin.com.br/eitch/blog/2006/06/17/kde-sub-packaging-approach-on-fedora/
> 
> And I'm bringing this discussion into the list too. I'll paste the post here 
> too:
> 
> KDE Sub-Packaging Approach on Fedora
> =======
...
> The Current Approach
> =======
> I talked with many people (20+) and all of them said the same thing: this is 
> really annoying. “There’s got to be a way to install only kopete or kmail, 
> instead of the whole collection of programs”.
> 
> The Solution: A Sub-Packaging Approach
> =======
> This is already used in some distributions, and users appear to like it.
...

> Downside: Maintainership
> =======
> While having these advantages above, we gain a more complicated specfile, 

My personal take (following one of Fedora's core mantras)... upstream, 
upstream, upstream... how does upstream distribute/package things?  IMO, 
packaging should generally follow suit, and if you don't like that, take 
your beef upstream(*).

KDE sub-packaging is/will-be a lot more work, for what I consider to be 
little benefit: primarly less disk space used (and what's a few MB 
between friends these days?).

OTOH, if package maintainers can handle the extra complexity and don't 
mind extra workload associated with supporting the sub-package approach, 
then I don't think anyone is going to tell you that you can't do it.

-- Rex

(*) Unfortunately, I've seen people take this particular beef upstream 
before, and kde dev's responses are generally disappointing: they 
(generally) claim this is the job of the distro packager(s).  *sigh*.