Packaging of new plasma-foo work spaces

[Scott Kitterman]

> Hello,
>
> On trečiadienis 25 Lapkritis 2009 18:25:28 Scott Kitterman wrote:
>> Our thought is to not split Plasma Desktop out into a separate binary,
>> but
>> leave it in kdebase-workspace as something that should always be
>> installed
>> (somewhat as a fallback) even if it's not started by default on some
>>  devices.
>
> Why?

When we were discussing it, it felt safer.  Considering it further, my
opinion has evolved.  Particularly given the rebranding move by KDE so
that "Plasma Desktop" is a clearly separate entity that users might want
to install and your point below about not entirely reducing code
installed, I think it should be a separate binary.  More beloew.

>>  Then additional plasmas (Plasma Netbook for KDE SC 4.4) would be
>>  in separate binaries so they would only be installed on devices
>>  appropriate for the specialized plasma.  The files built from:
>>
>> http://websvn.kde.org/trunk/KDE/kdebase/workspace/plasma/netbook/
>>
>> would all go in a plasma-netbook package built from the
>> kdebase-workspace
>> source.
>
> plasma-netbook package makes sense.
>
>>
>> This approach seems reasonably scalable and future proof and also
>> minimizes
>> the amount of code installed on most systems.
>
> It might be scalable, but it does not minimize amount of code installed.
> plasma-desktop is still uselessly installed where otherwise it is not
> needed.

Agreed (see above).  It's less code than not breaking anything out (all
plasmas installed in all systems), but it's certainly not minimal.

> Anyway, more justification on technical grounds please.

In our KDE 4.3 release, we built an experimental plamsa-netbook package
from playground with these contents:

http://packages.ubuntu.com/karmic/i386/plasma-netbook/filelist

Similarly, we'd build plamsa-netbook for KDE 4.4 with:

http://websvn.kde.org/trunk/KDE/kdebase/workspace/plasma/netbook/

I'm also suggesting a similar plasma-desktop package that would split out
from kdebase-workspace-bin.

Based on my short IRC conversation with pusling, I checked with upstream
and there is a KCM that allows users to select which plasma to run if
multiple plasmas are installed.  It is not active if only one is
installed.

Here is the summary of what notmart had to say about it:

> There is a kcontrol module that lets you chose the shells that starts. It
> automatically gets disabled if either plasma-desktop or plasma-netbook
> executables aren't present.  It uses KAutostart that basically puts
> desktop files in ~/.config/autostart.

> In the netbook version you could not install the desktop parts (they are
> quite separated in the source dir so it should be easy to package them
> separately).  Then, in the netbook package, or better as a separate
> package you can put an autostart desktop file that installs globally.  If
> the user then installs plasma-desktop and chooses it the autostart of
> plasma-netbook gets disabled on a per-user basis.  We are still wondering
> how to avoid autostarting of both if the global autorun desktop file is
> installed for plasma-netbook, perhaps installing it it could delete the
> one of plasma-desktop and viceversa?

It sounds to me like the upstream concept supports the idea of only
installing one plasma and letting the user install an alternative one if
they prefer (we have had requests for this with our Kubuntu Netbook tech
preview).

I was thinking that perhaps we could use the alternatives system to
control which plasma is autostarted on first run, but I need to review
policy on alternatives to know if it's appropriate.

Scott K