[gentoo-dev] Project Update: qt-4

["Caleb Tennis" <caleb@gentoo.org>]

Just a quick update on the happens in the x11-libs/qt world, as I'm introducing some
changes that will probably affect people in the not-to-distant future.

Since Qt is starting to get rather, ahem, big, I've decided that with the
introduction of version 4.4 it's a good time to try and split it down into more
manageable chunks.  I'm introducing a few new packages that are designed to break
out some of the major pieces into their own packages.  I present:

x11-libs/qt
x11-libs/qt-dbus ( Breaking out into its own package )
x11-libs/qt-phonon ( New for 4.4, a wrapper around various sound modules )
x11-libs/qt-qt3support ( Breaking out into its own package )
x11-libs/qt-webkit ( New for 4.4, Qt's integrated WebKit support )

There may be some more of these as time goes on and necessity/desire dictate.

The main motivation behind doing this is to make the package a little more
manageable, in that it's not one huge monolithic package with a million use flags
dictating which modules get built.  This should make dependant package maintenance
nicer, as you can just depend on the necessary packages and not have to resort to
the built_with_use trickery that we all love so much.

As well, we gain in the same vein as the split KDE style packages, that updates and
security fixes don't require a recompilation of all of the non-affected modules.

There are still lots of goodies that need to be tested.  I'm sure there are
edge-case USE flag scenarios that may need to be accounted for, performance tweaks
to be made, and other things I haven't thought of.  If you're into bleeding edge,
I'd love to have you try out some of these new packages and see if you've got any
failures or ideas for making them better.

As usual, this stuff is all package.masked right now pending lots of tweaks and
changes in the short term.  My guess is that it will hit portage proper by the end
of 1Q2008.  Hopefully we can have it all happy by then.

Feel free to file any bug reports you can find or think of.  Patches are especially
encouraged.

Thanks,
Caleb

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