Hi Frank, First of all, please do not get me wrong. I have had 50 years in this business, as a software developer, designer, manager and freelance consultant --- and now that I am retired, as a KDE developer, in KDE Games.
I do understand the importance of proper bug reporting and version identification. And I have reported two bugs in the heart of KDE that occurred in the Mac OS X environment. I have also alerted the Macports guys to the importance of running kbuildsycoca4 at some time after installing KDE. That is now a regular feature of Macports and has "unbroken" a few KDE applications and utilities, I am pleased to say. On 08/03/2014, at 6:43 PM, Frank Reininghaus wrote: > 2014-03-08 4:38 GMT+01:00 Ian Wadham: >> While we are on the topic of testing, how much testing is done of >> KDE's cross-platform and cross-desktop implementations? > > Unless the people who prepare the Mac packages test them, the only > testing is done by you and by other users, So what I am hearing, in answer to my question, is "No testing by the KDE development team". > most of whom unfortunately > seem to be either unable or unwilling to file useful bug reports and > help to debug the problems. Most of the problems that occur are in building and configuring packages across various Apple machines and versions of OS X, from several years ago to the present day. The Macports team provide about 12,000 packages and do a wonderful job of answering the users' queries on MacPorts Users <macports-us...@lists.macosforge.org>. The users usually file their bug reports (about builds, etc) in the Macports bugs database. >> Just in the last week I have seen cases of a guy on Apple OS X who could >> not build kde4-baseapps > > Which version of kde-baseapps? Has this guy filed a bug report? He filed one at https://trac.macports.org/ticket/42673. He did not nominate a version of KDE, but it would have to be in the range KDE 4.10 to 4.12. At this stage, it looks as if the problem could be compiler-related. >> On Apple OS X, with which I am familiar, the Macports guys do >> a great job of porting and distributing KDE libraries and apps, >> but several apps are severely broken. On my own system, I have >> built Dolphin, but it crashes before showing any window. > > Never ever talk about bugs in applications without mentioning the > version please. There was a Dolphin crash on MacOS some time ago which > could be fixed because Gilles Caulier and Kurt Hindenburg helped to > debug it and tested a patch: > > https://bugs.kde.org/show_bug.cgi?id=316209 > https://git.reviewboard.kde.org/r/111182/ > > If you see a crash in a more recent version, we would like to know about it. I tried Dolphin at KDE 4.10.1. I do not think I have the same crash as bug 316209, because I get nothing at all on the screen when Dolphin crashes. >> I cannot tell you why, because Dr Konqui does not work either ... :-( > > I hope you know how to get a backtrace on MacOS. I think I do, but I do not (yet) know how to interpret it … Do you? Right now I am busy working to meet KDE 4.13 deadlines, so investigating Dolphin has to be low on my priorities, and OS X has its own file manager. My concern, when I have time, is to investigate getting Digikam and some of the edu packages to work fully on OS X. There is nothing quite like them in the Mac world … >> This sort of thing does discredit to KDE, which contains many >> fine apps and utilities and is a fine desktop on its home turf, in >> Linux. But in the Apple environment, when discussing KDE >> apps, I have even seen 4-letter words bandied about ... :-( >> >> Maybe it is time some KDE guys had a joint sprint with Apple and >> Windows guys and got to the bottom of such problems. > > No, it's time that KDE users on Mac learn that the software can only > improve if they tell the developers (most of them do not work on MacOS > at all) about any problems and help to debug them. That is not very easy. The kind of problems I am talking about seem to be in the area where KDE processes inter-operate and inter-communicate on a KDE desktop, but perhaps not so well on an OS X desktop, and it is difficult to find out much about that. I have been on this list before and tried. So it is difficult, at the OS X end, to nail anything down. > If that is not possible, then we should seriously consider dropping > MacOS support IMHO, to prevent further discredit being done to KDE. Well, maybe so. Qt manages OK cross-platform and I have had no problems at all with qt4-mac, nor does any other OS X user I have met. If KDE developers cannot or will not test a release on some version of Apple hardware and OS X, what right do they have to offer it as a cross-platform and cross-desktop system? >> And it would be nice to have some regular testing ... :-) > > I understand that quite a bit of regular testing is being done by you > and your friends. No, not testing, they are mostly just attempting to build and *use* stuff. If they fail, I think they just go and try some other package … :-) Cheers, Ian W. >> Visit http://mail.kde.org/mailman/listinfo/kde-devel#unsub to unsubscribe <<
