[gentoo-dev] RFC: KDE 'child' packages (separate ebuilds for konqueror kmail etc.)

[Dan Armak]

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Hello everyone,

During the last week I've been working on separating the kde-base/* packages 
into 'child' packages, a feature requested by some people.  For example, 
instead of kdenetwork we'd have separate kmail, knode, kppp etc. ebuilds. The 
actual eclass framework to do this is ready.

However, there is a problem. A 'parent' package (e.g. kde-base/kdenetwork) 
will still exist since most people will want to merge all of it. There are 
two ways to go:

1. The parent and child packages will not be related. They will overwrite each 
other's files. This is unacceptable.

2. The parent package will depend on all of its children and install nothing 
itself. Like kde-base/kde depends on kdebase kdenetwork etc., so will 
kde-base/kdenetwork depend on net-www/konqueror, net-mail/kmail etc. This is 
the approach I've taken so far.

The problem is that while every 'child' package only compiles and installs the 
relevant files, it still needs to run the complete configure script of its 
parent package. In the admittedly worst-case example of kdebase, the script 
takes ~1.5 minutes to execute on my P3-900. kdebase has 39 child packages, so 
emerging kdebase with the new setup (i.e. emerging all child packages) will 
take about an hour longer than emerging a monolithic kdebase takes now - 
worse for slower computers.

Most users won't accept this tradeoff of compile time for flexibility. So if 
you have an alternative solution, please suggest it. Otherwise there won't be 
any kde child packages. Speak now or remain forever silent :-)

- -- 
Dan Armak
Gentoo Linux developer (KDE)
Matan, Israel
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