[gentoo-dev] Multiple kdelibs

[gentoo-dev] Multiple kdelibs

[Dan Armak]

Hi all,

I want to raise yet again the issue of multiple qt/kde.

We have solved the issue of having multiple QT libs installed. However, this 
is not much help without having multiple kdelibs installed as well, since 
nearly all qt apps are kde apps as well.

The problem here is that while a user typically uses only one kde, he usually 
has a large amount of supplementary kde-based apps (everything outside 
kde-base, which insludes koffice, kdevelop, and the other 1000+ kde apps).

Another thing to remember is the fact that back in the kde 1->2 move, about 
1/3 of all kde apps (my estimation) were never ported to kde2, and were more 
or less abandoned. It was a very long time before the others were ported and 
achieved the same level of stability and features. So people who use kde as 
their main desktop may well prefer to stay with kde2.x and the apps they use 
than move to kde3.x right away.

There are several options imo (in no particular order):
1. Develop a scheme for kdelibs similar to that used with qt. Place different 
kdelibs in /usr/lib/kdelibs-$V and juggle paths around. Use eclasses to 
ensure correct kdelibs is used.
Pro: easy to set up, unless unexpected problem emerges.
Con: there's not much sense in having mutliple kdelibs like this unless we go 
for option 2.
This is FHS0compatible, but probably falls under some "in the last extreme" 
clause.

2. Revert to putting whole kde's in /opt/kde$V.
Pro: easy to handle once working. Best for users, who can mix kde versions 
and apps at will.
Con: goes against the FHS, which started this whole mess in the first place.

3. Enforce single kdelibs. This also means enforcing a single qt.
Pro: easiest to implement and manage.
Con: will greatly inconvinience users.

Right now it looks as if we're heading towards (3). I think there's no point 
in choosing (2) over (1).

What do you think?


-- 

Dan Armak
Gentoo Linux Developer, Desktop Team
Matan, Israel

Re: [gentoo-dev] Multiple kdelibs

[Mikael Hallendal]

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sön 2001-10-21 klockan 22.21 skrev Dan Armak:

> There are several options imo (in no particular order):
> 1. Develop a scheme for kdelibs similar to that used with qt. Place different 
> kdelibs in /usr/lib/kdelibs-$V and juggle paths around. Use eclasses to 
> ensure correct kdelibs is used.
> Pro: easy to set up, unless unexpected problem emerges.
> Con: there's not much sense in having mutliple kdelibs like this unless we go 
> for option 2.
> This is FHS0compatible, but probably falls under some "in the last extreme" 
> clause.

Why can't you have them in /usr/lib/kdelibs-$V (just another dir than
/opt/kde$V).

But isn't it just the header-files that is the problem? And not the libs
(or do the libs cause troubles too?)

Regards,
  Mikael Hallendal

-- 

Mikael Hallendal
Gentoo Linux Developer, Desktop Team Leader
CodeFactory AB, Stockholm, Sweden


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Re: [gentoo-dev] Multiple kdelibs

[Dan Armak]

On Sunday 21 October 2001 22:54, you wrote:
> Why can't you have them in /usr/lib/kdelibs-$V (just another dir than
> /opt/kde$V).
I can. But if I go to the effort of doing this anyway, why not do it for the 
whole of kde, which will require minimal extra work?

>
> But isn't it just the header-files that is the problem? And not the libs
> (or do the libs cause troubles too?)
I'm not sure. Even if it's just the headers, the problem is essentially the 
same as far as I can see.

-- 

Dan Armak
Gentoo Linux Developer, Desktop Team
Matan, Israel

Re: [gentoo-dev] Multiple kdelibs

[Mikael Hallendal]

mån 2001-10-22 klockan 22.05 skrev Dan Armak:
> On Sunday 21 October 2001 22:54, you wrote:
> > Why can't you have them in /usr/lib/kdelibs-$V (just another dir than
> > /opt/kde$V).
> I can. But if I go to the effort of doing this anyway, why not do it for the 
> whole of kde, which will require minimal extra work?

So what was the scheme you used for /opt/kde$V (to choose the correct
one?)

> > But isn't it just the header-files that is the problem? And not the
> > libs (or do the libs cause troubles too?)
> I'm not sure. Even if it's just the headers, the problem is essentially the 
> same as far as I can see.

If the libs don't collide (ie, they are named different) and only the
headers do then all the kde-libs can be in /usr/lib and the headers has
to be in /usr/include/kde-$V or something. Then you must have a way of
choosing the correct include-path but I guess you have to anyway?

QT/KDE should really solve this issue.

Regards,
  Mikael Hallendal

-- 
Mikael Hallendal                micke@codefactory.se
CodeFactory AB                  http://www.codefactory.se/
Office: +46 (0)8 587 583 05     Cell: +46 (0)709 718 918

Re: [gentoo-dev] Multiple kdelibs

[Dan Armak]

On Monday 22 October 2001 22:11, you wrote:
> So what was the scheme you used for /opt/kde$V (to choose the correct
> one?)
There was never one fully implemented. You stopped me halfway through with 
the /usr stuff. But it would have been the same as the current QT scheme, 
with the exception that we can now use eclasses to make everything much much 
easier.

For libraries, it's enough to add kde*/lib to LDPATH (in descending order, 
latest versions first) and the apps will find the right library to lload.
For binaries, we add $KDEDIR/bin (of the current KDE) to PATH only on KDe 
startup, i.e. in the /usr/X11R6/bin/wm/kde$V script, and the /bin's of all 
other KDEs after it in descending order.
For headers, we can use eclasses to select the right dir. An ebuild will 
simply specify:
inherit qt$V, kde$V
or similar.

> If the libs don't collide (ie, they are named different) and only the
> headers do then all the kde-libs can be in /usr/lib and the headers has
> to be in /usr/include/kde-$V or something. Then you must have a way of
> choosing the correct include-path but I guess you have to anyway?
The include path is the easiest part of the problem because it's only needed 
during compile time not run time and we have eclasses for that.

-- 

Dan Armak
Gentoo Linux Developer, Desktop Team
Matan, Israel

Re: [gentoo-dev] Multiple kdelibs

[Mikael Hallendal]

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mån 2001-10-22 klockan 22.18 skrev Dan Armak:
> On Monday 22 October 2001 22:11, you wrote:
> > So what was the scheme you used for /opt/kde$V (to choose the correct
> > one?)
> There was never one fully implemented. You stopped me halfway through with 
> the /usr stuff. But it would have been the same as the current QT scheme, 
> with the exception that we can now use eclasses to make everything much much 
> easier.
> 
> For libraries, it's enough to add kde*/lib to LDPATH (in descending order, 
> latest versions first) and the apps will find the right library to lload.

Hmm .. if this is possible, putting all libs in /usr/lib should be too. 

> For binaries, we add $KDEDIR/bin (of the current KDE) to PATH only on KDe 
> startup, i.e. in the /usr/X11R6/bin/wm/kde$V script, and the /bin's of all 
> other KDEs after it in descending order.

It shouldn't be in /usr/X11R6/bin/wm/kde$V (only XFree86 should install
things in /usr/X11R6).

Hmm, this means that no KDE-apps will have there binaries in /usr/bin,
or?

> For headers, we can use eclasses to select the right dir. An ebuild will 
> simply specify:
> inherit qt$V, kde$V
> or similar.

Hmm.. this will cause lots of troubles for developers (KDE/QT-developers
that is) that has to make special cases for compiling things on Gentoo.

> > If the libs don't collide (ie, they are named different) and only the
> > headers do then all the kde-libs can be in /usr/lib and the headers has
> > to be in /usr/include/kde-$V or something. Then you must have a way of
> > choosing the correct include-path but I guess you have to anyway?
> The include path is the easiest part of the problem because it's only needed 
> during compile time not run time and we have eclasses for that.

As said above this is good for packages in portage but sucks pretty
badly when you want to compile something manually.

Perhaps we can solve this by making symlink from /usr/include/kde ->
/usr/include/kde-$V (not sure of how kde installs its headers).
This does however mean that all kde-$V ebuilds has to make this symlink
and the one that is emerged last will be the one that is used (and if
you unmerge it no link will be there which isn't a good scheme).

But as said, if it is possible to add them all to LDPATH (and it finds
the correct lib to link) it should be possible to install them all in
/usr/lib (ie. they have different version-numbers)?

How do other distros solve this?

Regards,
  Mikael Hallendal
 
-- 

Mikael Hallendal
Gentoo Linux Developer, Desktop Team Leader
CodeFactory AB, Stockholm, Sweden


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Re: [gentoo-dev] Multiple kdelibs

[Dan Armak]

On Monday 22 October 2001 22:40, you wrote:
> Hmm .. if this is possible, putting all libs in /usr/lib should be too.
Let's put it this way: AFAIK it's possible and probably, just as it worked 
with qt. I haven't tested it yet (will in the next 2 days), but am confident 
it'll work. The libs cannot be placed in one dir because they have the same 
names, but ld knows how to select the right one at run time, or rather the 
first one that works.

> Hmm, this means that no KDE-apps will have there binaries in /usr/bin,
> or?
There'll be no kde-base/* binaries in /usr (kdebase, kdenetwork, whatever). I 
expect that all other KDE apps will still live in /usr, since there's little 
need for multiple versions of them. I think that's best.

Of course, there's nothing to say that one of the kdes installed shouldn't 
live in /usr and the others in /opt/kde$V, but it'd be difficult to selecvt 
via ebuilds where to install in that case. Another disadvantage of /usr is 
that it tends to get into paths and mix things up, whereas /opt/* isn't in 
any path unless I put it there.

> Hmm.. this will cause lots of troubles for developers (KDE/QT-developers
> that is) that has to make special cases for compiling things on Gentoo.
I understand that you mean people compiling manually, without using ebuilds - 
see below.

> As said above this is good for packages in portage but sucks pretty
> badly when you want to compile something manually.
>
> Perhaps we can solve this by making symlink from /usr/include/kde ->
> /usr/include/kde-$V (not sure of how kde installs its headers).
> This does however mean that all kde-$V ebuilds has to make this symlink
> and the one that is emerged last will be the one that is used (and if
> you unmerge it no link will be there which isn't a good scheme).
No, it's much simpler - just export the right KDEDIR env var and the kde 
app's configure script will use $KDEDIR/include before anything in any path.

>
> But as said, if it is possible to add them all to LDPATH (and it finds
> the correct lib to link) it should be possible to install them all in
> /usr/lib (ie. they have different version-numbers)?
No, see above.

> How do other distros solve this?
AFAIK no distro has a working multi-qt/kde scheme that allows free use of any 
combination of KDEs. We'll be the first :-)
Of course, this may be wrong, as I have little expirience with other distros, 
and in the three or four I've tried I didn't look at this too much because it 
was pre-kde3 time.

-- 

Dan Armak
Gentoo Linux Developer, Desktop Team
Matan, Israel

Re: [gentoo-dev] Multiple kdelibs

[Mikael Hallendal]

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mån 2001-10-22 klockan 23.10 skrev Dan Armak:
> On Monday 22 October 2001 22:40, you wrote:
> > Hmm .. if this is possible, putting all libs in /usr/lib should be too.
> Let's put it this way: AFAIK it's possible and probably, just as it worked 
> with qt. I haven't tested it yet (will in the next 2 days), but am confident 
> it'll work. The libs cannot be placed in one dir because they have the same 
> names, but ld knows how to select the right one at run time, or rather the 
> first one that works.

Hmm, anyone knows how ld does this?

> Of course, there's nothing to say that one of the kdes installed shouldn't 
> live in /usr and the others in /opt/kde$V, but it'd be difficult to selecvt 
> via ebuilds where to install in that case. Another disadvantage of /usr is 
> that it tends to get into paths and mix things up, whereas /opt/* isn't in 
> any path unless I put it there.

Err, they shouldn't live in /opt/kde$V at all, they should live in
/usr/lib/kde$V or whatever, but not in /opt according to the scheme we
(Gentoo developers) have decided to use.
 
> No, it's much simpler - just export the right KDEDIR env var and the kde 
> app's configure script will use $KDEDIR/include before anything in any path.

Ok, good.

> > How do other distros solve this?
> AFAIK no distro has a working multi-qt/kde scheme that allows free use of any 
> combination of KDEs. We'll be the first :-)
> Of course, this may be wrong, as I have little expirience with other distros, 
> and in the three or four I've tried I didn't look at this too much because it 
> was pre-kde3 time.

This was meant as a, please look at other distros before spending even
more time on this issue. Perhaps they have come up with a good scheme.
And if they hasn't people seem to be pretty happy with it anyway so
perhaps it's not really needed.

>From what it looks like you have spent far to many hours on this issue
that could have been put on better things.

Regards,
  Mikael Hallendal

-- 

Mikael Hallendal
Gentoo Linux Developer, Desktop Team Leader
CodeFactory AB, Stockholm, Sweden


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Re: [gentoo-dev] Multiple kdelibs

[Nathaniel Grady]

I think there are probably binary name colisions between various kde versions, not just libraries. For example kdm? I havn't actually verified this as i don't actually have >1 version of kde at the moment but didn't kde-1.x have kdm as well kde-2? Despite what the LHS sais I've very partial to /opt/kdeX scheme. All apps compiled against *that* kde version should go into that version so if you have apps of the same name copiled against different versions of kde you'll always get the right one. When I used to use LFS I did someting like this (like 2 summers ago) because I had apps that were never ported to kde2 that I still used... While probably the least effective argument it's also the most convient for developers because they can from a shell script set KDEDIR, PATH, LD_LIBRARY_PATH, etc in a terminal to be for a differnt version of kde than they're actually using... I think a scheme similar to this was published on kde's websight (or maybe it was just a mailing list - memory fuzy) that suggested this scheme. Just run a shell script in your terminal called "kde1" before running a kde1 program if you used kde2 by default, or vice versa.

Maybe someone should write one of the LFS people and ask if they had thoughts on how distros were to deal with this issue and / or make them aware that /opt/kdeX and /opt/gnomeX and the like maybe are a better idea than "put everying in /usr"? 

I really always thought life would be eaiser if someting like java's namespace was adopted - put everying in /prefix/org.kde/kde-1.0.0/ or some such? which again in a somewhat less explicit function i tend to do when hand-compiling. i know the argument that a package manager is supposed to keep track of files so you don't have to put everying in it's own directory, but i think the multiple-version thing is an equally important issue. Is there an official rational for not wanting each program or each groups's program in it's own tree? I guess searching a lot of different dirs for libs/binaries might take a while but don't those get cashed in a hash somewhere anyway? I'll freely admit that I'm heavly biased by the way i always did everying in unix (which mostly was a backlash from windows strewing stuff everywhere / a lack of respect for package managemnt) :)

Just my 2 cents :)

--Nate Grady

Re: [gentoo-dev] Multiple kdelibs

[Mikael Hallendal]

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tis 2001-10-23 klockan 01.56 skrev Nathaniel Grady:
> I think there are probably binary name colisions between various kde
> versions, not just libraries. For example kdm? I havn't actually
> verified this as i don't actually have >1 version of kde at the moment
> but didn't kde-1.x have kdm as well kde-2? 

Hmm.. a binary that are in both version should only be installed once.
Ie. you install the libraries for kde-2 and kde-3 but only kdm for
kde-3. 

> Despite what the LHS sais I've very partial to /opt/kdeX scheme. All 
> apps compiled against *that* kde version should go into that version
> so if you have apps of the same name copiled against different
> versions of kde you'll always get the right one.

When would you want to do this. If an app works fine in the latest
KDE-release then just compile it against that release.

> When I used to use LFS I did someting like this (like 2 summers ago)
> because I had apps that were never ported to kde2 that I still used...

This is solved by always keep kde-libs 2 and 3 installed.

> Maybe someone should write one of the LFS people and ask if they had 
> thoughts on how distros were to deal with this issue and / or make
> them aware that /opt/kdeX and /opt/gnomeX and the like maybe are a
> better idea than "put everying in /usr"? 

Just to clearify, this is just about KDE, the GNOME developers are
making sure that you can install GNOME 1 and GNOME 2 in the same prefix,
ie. They name the library-files different and they add the headers in a
version-dependent way. KDE should fix this too.

Also, we have determined already that /opt is for binary packages only.
Therefor putting KDE there is not an option.
 
Now I'm off to bed.

Regards,
  Mikael Hallendal

-- 

Mikael Hallendal
Gentoo Linux Developer, Desktop Team Leader
CodeFactory AB, Stockholm, Sweden

-- 
Mikael Hallendal                micke@codefactory.se
CodeFactory AB                  http://www.codefactory.se/
Office: +46 (0)8 587 583 05     Cell: +46 (0)709 718 918

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Re: [gentoo-dev] Multiple kdelibs

[Dan Armak]

On Tuesday 23 October 2001 02:37, you wrote:
> Hmm.. a binary that are in both version should only be installed once.
> Ie. you install the libraries for kde-2 and kde-3 but only kdm for
> kde-3.
Unless you want multipe KDEs.

-- 

Dan Armak
Gentoo Linux Developer, Desktop Team
Matan, Israel

Re: [gentoo-dev] Multiple kdelibs

[Mikael Hallendal]

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tis 2001-10-23 klockan 07.01 skrev Dan Armak:
> On Tuesday 23 October 2001 02:37, you wrote:
> > Hmm.. a binary that are in both version should only be installed once.
> > Ie. you install the libraries for kde-2 and kde-3 but only kdm for
> > kde-3.
> Unless you want multipe KDEs.

Is there any other reason than for testing that you want multiple
versions of KDE (I'm not talking about the libs here).

I see that you want to have multiple version of kde-libs installed since
not all apps will be ported (or that it takes some time for them to be).
But is there really a reason for having multiple KDE version installed.

If it's only so that people can test KDE3 and still have KDE2 installed
I think that you should drop this efforts and concentrate on something
important instead. It's easy enough to build KDE2 with --build-pkg and
then build KDE3 to test it, if you don't like it (which I can't see why
people would want KDE2 instead of KDE3 when final is out) just emerge
KDE2 --use-pkg to reinstall KDE2.

Regards,
  Mikael Hallendal

-- 

Mikael Hallendal
Gentoo Linux Developer, Desktop Team Leader
CodeFactory AB, Stockholm, Sweden


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Re: [gentoo-dev] Multiple kdelibs

[Dan Armak]

OK, I stop arguing. I'll do a setup for kdelibs like the qt one in 
/usr/lib/kdelobs-$v. (Once * or <> deps are available that is).

Meanwhile we can resolve the /usr/X11R6/bin/wm issue - do you want to move 
it? Where to?

-- 

Dan Armak
Gentoo Linux Developer, Desktop Team
Matan, Israel

Re: [gentoo-dev] Multiple kdelibs

[Martin Schlemmer]

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On Tue, 2001-10-23 at 21:42, Dan Armak wrote:
> OK, I stop arguing. I'll do a setup for kdelibs like the qt one in 
> /usr/lib/kdelobs-$v. (Once * or <> deps are available that is).
> 
> Meanwhile we can resolve the /usr/X11R6/bin/wm issue - do you want to move 
> it? Where to?
> 

is it really needed ? why did we start using it in the first place ?

-- 

Martin Schlemmer
Gentoo Linux Developer, Desktop Team Developer
Cape Town, South Africa


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Re: [gentoo-dev] Multiple kdelibs

[Mikael Hallendal]

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tis 2001-10-23 klockan 22.17 skrev Martin Schlemmer:
> On Tue, 2001-10-23 at 21:42, Dan Armak wrote:
> > OK, I stop arguing. I'll do a setup for kdelibs like the qt one in 
> > /usr/lib/kdelobs-$v. (Once * or <> deps are available that is).
> > 
> > Meanwhile we can resolve the /usr/X11R6/bin/wm issue - do you want to move 
> > it? Where to?
> > 
> 
> is it really needed ? why did we start using it in the first place ?

Hi!

Yes I don't think that with what we decided (only XFree86 should install
in /usr/X11R6/...) that other packages should install something there.

I can't see any reason for this scheme. From what I understand this is
so that users can add 'fvwm2' in ~/.wm and get xsession to launch fvwm2
on startup. This is what ~/.xsession is for, just add /usr/bin/fvwm2 &
in ~/.xsession and you get the same.

It might however have some other use that noone seems to know... if that
is the case, please tell us now. Last time I asked neither me nor
danamark did now of such a use.

Regards,
  Mikael Hallendal
 
-- 

Mikael Hallendal
Gentoo Linux Developer, Desktop Team Leader
CodeFactory AB, Stockholm, Sweden


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Re: [gentoo-dev] Multiple kdelibs

[Dan Armak]

It's for using more than a single command. I.e., for kde, we add $KDEDIR/bin 
to PATH - or did before KDE installed into /usr. I'm not sure to what use the 
other wms put it.

This can probably be also achieved using .xsession?

-- 

Dan Armak
Gentoo Linux Developer, Desktop Team
Matan, Israel

Re: [gentoo-dev] Multiple kdelibs

[Dan Armak]

On Tuesday 23 October 2001 01:56, you wrote:
> I think there are probably binary name colisions between various kde
> versions, not just libraries.
That's correct.

-- 

Dan Armak
Gentoo Linux Developer, Desktop Team
Matan, Israel

Re: [gentoo-dev] Multiple kdelibs

[Dan Armak]

On Tuesday 23 October 2001 00:38, you wrote:
> Err, they shouldn't live in /opt/kde$V at all, they should live in
> /usr/lib/kde$V or whatever, but not in /opt according to the scheme we
> (Gentoo developers) have decided to use.
That's OK, as long as they're not in any default path.

-- 

Dan Armak
Gentoo Linux Developer, Desktop Team
Matan, Israel