September 13, 2008
Konqueror web shortcut for gentoo packages
You’re going to think that I’m some kind of web shortcut maniac, but I really think I’m not.
I’m using http://packages.larrythecow.org a lot, and only today did I think about creating a konqueror web shortcut to get there faster. I’ve called it ‘gt’ (for gentoo, yes, i’m that lazy), and the magic url thinguy is
http://packages.larrythecow.org/?v=search&s=\{@}
Now I can type “gt:kdebase-meta” in konquy or alt-f2 and feel ashamed in front of my debian friends whom I’ve been laughing at so much in the past because debian is slow to catch up with kde releases.
Today, several weeks after KDE 4.1 has been released, and 10 days after KDE 4.1.1 has been released, there is still no official ebuilds for the kde 4.1 branch. I know there are overlays, there are some heated bug-reports, blogs and even some unofficial status page about it, but still, kde 4.1 is not in gentoo, and it makes me feel really sad.
Yes, I know, it’s free software and I can do it myself. And then?
Sweet deal on the shortcut!
…and I feel your pain with the Gentoo/KDE4 situation. I was running that combo for a little while, but a couple weeks ago I switched back to openSUSE 11.0.
yeah, I miss Gentoo, but, well, the openSUSE Build Service makes KDE4 so damn easy! I don’t miss the cryptic and vague errors cmake is capable of spitting out one bit.
you can leave gentoo for archlinux ofcourse! kdemod 4.1 FTW!
…and then release it to the masses so the circle is closed.
Gentoolemen would be very pleased for this. 😉
And I use:
http://bugs.gentoo.org/buglist.cgi?quicksearch=\{@}
for searching the Gentoo Bugzilla. 😉
So a good part of the reason KDE 4.1 isn’t in Gentoo at the moment is because the KDE team, which used to have ebuilds out *before* the release, contains less folks than it had before. The KDE lead was forcibly retired by the Gentoo Council, a few of the other members of the team were also forcibly retired, some remaining developers left shortly thereafter.
The team that’s left is doing what they can, but they don’t have enough manpower to be that functional. Right now there’s a myriad of splits inside of Gentoo, both of the technical type (as exhibited by the multiple package managers) and of the non-technical type (as exhibited by the Developer Relations Team and whether or not it is appropriate for this team to create a myriad of standards and punishments to control developer behavior on an open-source project.
The community is badly wounded and though everyone that works with Gentoo knows there’s something wrong, different teams continue to do the same thing and the distro continues to slip into a non-functional state.
In some ways, it’s actually hilarious to see some of the comments. Devrel seems to honestly believe that forcibly retiring a team’s project lead is just fine since Gentoo “is a community, not a project steered by one individual.”
Apparently they’re just as bad as HR at companies who think developers are interchangeable parts. Most sensible people know enough to keep those rare developers who do 10 times the work as a normal programmer. Most devs on OSS projects *are* these types of programmers. Gentoo has been losing most of their best developers. (They still have plenty of good people left, but they’re losing enough where you can in fact feel it very acutely.)
Anyways… it’s going to be a while I think before a good alternative appears.
I’ve been looking at a few of them, nothing’s quite there yet.
One of the KDE devs posted some info on his blog about the state of the ebuilds: http://blog.cryos.net/archives/190-An-Update-on-the-Gentoo-KDE-4.1-Ebuilds.html
I tried KDE4 in Ubuntu and it was broken beyond belief. I’d rather the Gentoo devs take the time to do it right than rush it into the tree.
I just finished a full reinstall of gentoo on my desktop. Well, almost, there are still some less-used apps to install.
I used the 4.1 ebuilds from the kdesvn-portage overlay (I hate paludis), and they worked great. My only problems so far: phonon isn’t detecting my audio card (but other programs do), the digikam ebuild doesn’t pull in all the dependencies, and some apps I want (eg. ktorrent) don’t have 4.1 ebuilds.
I installed ktorrent-3.1.2 from official source, and it worked perfectly: no dependency hell or anything.
But, yeah I definitely feel your pain. I’m planning to learn how to make ebuilds to help out, and make my installation cleaner.
I personaly prefer gentoo-portage.com, have been using the following shortcut for two years:
http://www.gentoo-portage.com/Search?search=\{@}
As for the state of gentoo, I really hope paludis / exherbo become a suitable replacement someday.
mm. indeed, promising site