Re: [gentoo-dev] ebuilds for kde3 beta etc.

[Dan Armak <danarmak@gentoo.org>]

To repeat and extend what I said:

On Sunday 23 December 2001 16:13, you wrote:
> > > 1. If the FHS say only binary stuff goes in /opt, where would I put
> > > several KDEs-in-testing? /usr/kde-$ver?
> >
> > Whatever makes sense; just don't use /opt.

On that subject, I'd like to raise once more the issue of KDE placing. Now
is the last time we can easily change it, before doing kde3 ebuilds. I
still think there should be support for multiple KDEs, which would live in
e.g. /usr/kde-$ver each. Juggling paths would be a lot easier.

The way things work right now - one big kde in /usr, many kdelibs in 
/usr/lib/kdelibs-$ver - there are the following problems, which will 
disappear if we place all KDEs (incl. kdelibs) in /usr/kde-$ver and put each 
app in the dir of the kdelibs to which it links:

- Many users will want multiple KDEs, with or without ebuilds that support 
it. It'd be better for us to do it for them, so that things are unified.

- Some apps don't like living separately from their kdelibs. In particular, 
noatun doesn't work at all (and apparently is unfixable save by patching the 
code), mosfet's liquid widgets require a makefile patch (applied), and kdm 
can't find the user icons (one possible solution is to manually move the 
icons in src_install). Other problems will likely arise.

- With one kde in /usr, it can be (from expirience) very complicated to 
startup a kde that lives elsewhere, since /usr always commes first in the 
paths.

- eclasses (and kdelibs & kdebase ebuilds) are becoming more and more complex 
and tangled to support all this.

I don't know how FHS-compatible that is (i.e. /usr/kde-$ver), beyond not
putting kde in /opt. But I'd really like it to be that way - it would 
certainly make everybody's life easier.

Now, I unfortunately missed the orig. kde->/usr thread back when it was 
discussed. Apparently it was mostly on IRC and not on the mailing lists so 
the only reason for having kde in /usr I really know is the FHS. There may be 
other & better reasons.

Even if we decide to hav only 1 kde, it will still be a lot better no to ahve 
in /kde. If we have /usr/kde-$ver dirs, each of which will contain a 
kdelibs-$ver and all apps linked against it, and kde base will live in one of 
those, it'll be a lot better than it is now. Again, because the kde that 
lives in /usr has execution priority over any others.

If we make kde live in /usr, -- 

Dan Armak
Gentoo Linux Developer, Desktop Team
Matan, Israel