Re: [gentoo-dev] FHS compliant KDE install and multi-version support

[Marcus D. Hanwell]

Dale wrote:
> Philip Webb wrote:
>> 080907 Jorge Manuel B. S. Vicetto wrote:
>>
>>> ignoring FHS ... are not valid solutions to this problem.
>>>
>>
>> Why ?  Who is demanding FHS compliance & for what reasons ?
>> Gentoo is not like other distros & sometimes needs to find its own way.
>> Given the well-known problems with KDE 4.0 & (still) 4.1 ,
>> I'ld like to be able to have the option of multiple versions available.
>>
>> I really do appreciate the hard volunteer work the KDE team donates
>> & have nothing but thanks to them all, but shouldn't your priority be
>> to get KDE 4.1 into 'testing', so that users can actually try it out ?
>> There's also 3.5.10 , which has been released, but isn't in Gentoo yet.
>>
> As a lowly user, I would like to keep KDE 3.5.* for quite a while and
> will most likely not switch until at least 4.3 or better is out.  Even
> that mostly depends on how many "issues" are still left out there.
The slotting of KDE 3.* and KDE 4.* was never a question - these will 
always remain slottable. The question is whether we really need to keep 
slotting of minor KDE versions in the new 4.* line, i.e. KDE 4.1 and 4.2 
slotted on the same system. I think the benefits of an FHS compliant, 
non-slottable (with other KDE 4 minor versions) install is the best 
thing for our general user base.

I also see how we can have slots outside of FHS for developers, power 
users and the ones who just like to be different ;-) These can be 
maintained in an overlay and use different slots than the ebuilds in the 
main tree. It is no real issue to be able to run a slotted KDE 4.2 
install alongside an FHS install of KDE 4.* and so FHS installs can be 
successfully slotted with other kdeprefix installs too.

This helps to make the normal KDE install much simpler to maintain with 
less gradual build up of cruft over the years (multiple older slots the 
user is no longer using). It also brings us into line with the FHS 
compliant Qt 4 ebuilds  and other desktops such as Gnome. The purpose of 
these posts was to solicit further feedback before things are pushed to 
the main tree.

Most other distributions install KDE into the main /usr hierarchy, that 
is the way upstream intends KDE to be installed and I think it will work 
well for most users. I do think Gentoo is about choice and so having 
overlays with ebuilds in a different slot seems to be the best solution 
we can offer given the constraint of slot invariance.

Thanks,

Marcus