[PyKDE] PyKDE - almost

[Jim Bublitz]

On Tuesday August 5 2003 20:03, Bruce Sass wrote:
> <sigh>
> KDE-3.1.3 installs and the next day you announce that PyKDE
> for 3.1.1 and 3.1.2 is on the horizon.

3.1.1 should work with the current release (but only at sip 3.5).

> On Tue, 5 Aug 2003, Jim Bublitz wrote:
> <...>

> > Argh! Hadn't checked kde.org in the last week or so. I'll
> > make this the second release - hopefully a few days after
> > the first one. It only takes about 30 minutes to upgrade (at
> > least for point releases). The time consuming part is
> > d/l'ing and installing the new KDE release (along with
> > another Linux install). However by dropping the KDE2 stuff,
> > I have lots of free partitions at the moment.

> I may as well be blunt about it...

> You should stop actively working with out-of-date software.

> I like the idea of being able to get PyKDE working no matter
> what version of Py or KDE one has, but it just doesn't seem to
> be working.

My philosophy is that upgrades shouldn't be forced, so I like to 
maintain backward compatibility as far as practical. Dropping 
KDE2 was pretty arbitrary, but I don't expect many people (or 
any) still depend on it. On the other hand, I've only been 
running KDE3 (in production) for about 6 months.  Probably 
similar to the reasoning Debian applies to 'stable'.

> Why not stick with the most recent releases and CVS snapshots
> of sip, Python and KDE -- leave the work of getting a PyKDE
> built for an old release of Python with an old release of KDE
> and who knows which version of sip to those who actually are
> going to use it.  Give'm a hand and apply patches to PyKDE
> which don't break things, but don't spend time trying to build
> using (say) sip-3.4, Py-2.1 and KDE-3.0.4 when 3.7, 2.3 and
> 3.1.3 are the current releases.

I haven't maintained PyKDE against earlier versions of sip - 
that's pretty difficult to do, and a lot of what Phil puts in 
sip upgrades (moreso in the past than now) is for the benefit of 
PyKDE in the first place. Phil does a good enough job (along 
with the Python guys) that tracking Python versions has never 
been a problem for me (and I don't think much problem for Phil).
But again, I'm still back at KDE 3.1.0 on my work machines and 
will be for a while probably, and other people are probably 
further back still.

> Have you considered using chroot setups instead of fresh Linux
> installs... Debian developers do this often enough (need to
> support packages in both stable and unstable distributions)
> they have packaged up a number of script to ease the pain of
> creating the right environment... searching on "chroot" in
> package descriptions via the form at
> http://packages.debian.org/ should get you links to packages
> (the source should *not* be Debian specific!).

It's easier to multi-boot than to use chroot because I test 
against multiple distributions (or would if I could get Mandrake 
to work and not just RH and SuSE) and multiple versions of 
distributions. gcc, Python, etc. The problems that arise 
otherwise are similar to what I wasted an hour on tonight - I 
test-built against KDE 3.0.3 on SuSE 7.3 and had all kinds of 
problems with one module (unresolved symbols). That was an old 
upgrade of 7.3 from KDE2 to KDE3. For KDE3.0.3 on SuSE 8.0, 
everything works fine. That's a SuSE problem IMO and the only 
practical fix is for users to upgrade SuSE in that case. (The 
7.3 version was just hanging around and that box happened to be 
free - otherwise, I don't try to verify all the possible 
permutations).

> Have you considered changing to a distro which does a better
> job of keeping you up-to-date...  I know Debian-unstable is
> good in this respect[1], Mandrake's "Cooker" would probably
> also do (sounds like it is more unstable than Debian-unstable,
> which I hear isn't much worse than other's releases[2]), I
> don't know what RH and SuSE offer the developer).

Mandrake 9.0 had problems in its Qt setup I didn't want to spend 
time working through. I installed Mandrake 9.1 last night and 
couldn't get it to network - might just need some 'route add' 
stuff, but I didn't feel like going through that at the moment 
either. So I'm not real big on Mandrake at the moment. The 
'drake' stuff to do networking setup was badly broken too, but 
that might be Cheapbytes fault.

Debian, on the other hand (hi Ricardo!) actually provides support 
and packaging for *current* PyQt and PyKDE versions, so I feel 
like those problems are covered.  I need to build and test 
against the distributions that don't provide support.

The bottom line is that PyKDE should run on nearly anything, so 
whether I develop somewhere else or not, I still need to be able 
to handle SuSE, RH and other problems, and I'd like to get them 
out of the way pre-release. Personally I find SuSE a lot easier 
to install and configure, but I'm used to it too.

> Consider this before you do "another Linux install"...
> Debian-unstable is built by developers for the purpose of
> developing software[3], it is not a snapshot of the next
> release or targeted towards any particular use or user (i.e.,
> desktop, server, newbie, enterprise, etc.) as you will likely
> get by installing a commercial distro's release or development
> version.

> Sorry for degenerating into a Debian advert.  I just can't
> help thinking that part of why I haven't been able to try
> PyKDE is because of the time you have been spending tracking
> upstream releases and installing Linux -- when my distro does
> all the infrastructure stuff for me and I haven't needed to do
> an install for years.

I don't mind the Debian advert at all - Debian just doesn't solve 
*my* problems. I still have to fix PyKDE when the KDE h files 
are out of sync with the SuSE KDE libs, and considering what's 
involved in locating/fixing those problems, it's much better to 
do it on SuSE in the first place. (Not to be too negative about 
SuSE - I prefer it over anything else I've tried)

I'm only concerned about shaving days or hours off development 
time right now because I want to get this release out ASAP. The 
overriding problem is not having had any time at all to spend on 
it the last few months. I've just had a rash of problems from 
dogs getting snake bit to other peoples dumb software problems 
(switching from Linux to Windows - sheesh!) just about costing 
me half of my business' sales, and everything imaginable in 
between. Short of 'apt-get anti-venin' or 'apt-get LART' 
working, I don't think the distribution I use makes that much 
difference in the long run.

Speaking of interruptions, we had a lightning storm go through 
tonight, and there are a couple of fires up valley from us. The 
Forest Service already has crews on them. It's cool and wet now, 
but it'll be tomorrow afternoon before we know for sure they're 
under control. Meaning tomorrow morning I have to hook up the 
fire pump (which should have been done already) and a few other 
miscellaneous things in case we need to evacuate. Doesn't seem 
likely at the moment though.

> One other part is a 28.8kpbs connection and a P133, otherwise
> I'd be downloading and building instead of ranting at you.

That's about a 4-5 hour build time for PyKDE (or maybe 10-12 if 
you don't have a lot of memory)?

> [1] currently at sip-3.7, Pythons 1.5-2.3 (any combination,
> have had 2.3x for many months), KDE-3.1.3 (in the last couple
> days, before that 3.1.2, 3.1.1, 3.0.somethings...)

> [2] It is rare to see someone struggling with a Debian
> (unstable or stable) problem on the local LUGs mailing list;
> RH and Mdk users seem to be always trying to find something or
> get "this" to work with "that" (especially the RH users, and I
> don't know what they are going to do now that they can't wait
> for the *.1 or *.2 minor release before upgrading :-).

RH, Mdk and SuSE are in the stores, so they probably get 
disproportionately more newbies. Most of the Debian (or gentoo, 
etc) users I know started out on something else.  I've come to 
prefer the "dumbed-down" installs --- 6-7 years ago I wouldn't 
have minded spending a day getting PPP to work; everything's so 
easy now, I won't take the time to manually set up networking 
when Mdk won't do it for me. 


Jim