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koffice suite for KDE3.5.10 on mdv2009.0


tux99
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I'm missing the Koffice suite in KDE 3.5.10 on Mandriva 2009.0, is there a chance that it will still be packaged up (at least in contrib)?

 

I sincerely hope that Mandriva won't abandon KDE 3.5 in future releases as KDE 4 is not really a successor of KDE 3 but rather a completely new and different desktop environment that should really have been named differently and from what I read KDE 3.5 will still be supported for several years by the developers.

 

Personally KDE 4 is not an option for me, I tried it and it doesn't suit my way of working at all, just like Gnome never suited me either, I'm not saying it's a bad desktop enviroment, it's just not for me.

 

I also think KDE 3.5 and KDE4 should be grouped separately in RPMdrake in the 'Graphical desktop' section, it's very confusing having them both together under KDE.

 

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Edit: just to clarify, I don't want this topic to be a KDE4 versus KDE 3.5 argument, I'm just interested in koffice for KDE 3.5 and the future of KDE 3.5 in Mandriva in general

Edited by tux99
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koffice2 will be available in Mandriva 2009 Spring release with KDE4.2

It is very unlikely that koffice will be packaged for 2009.0

KDE3.5 will be dropped from 2009 Spring (except, perhaps, to the extent required to support applications for which there is not yet a KDE4 version available)

 

Jim

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Thanks for the information.

 

koffice2 will be available in Mandriva 2009 Spring release with KDE4.2

It is very unlikely that koffice will be packaged for 2009.0

 

Could it be possible to install koffice 1.6.3 packages from mdv2008.1 in 2009.0?

Has anyone tried this already?

 

KDE3.5 will be dropped from 2009 Spring (except, perhaps, to the extent required to support applications for which there is not yet a KDE4 version available)

 

I guess I will have to look for alternatives then, it's a shame because KDE 4 is not KDE anymore so it shouldn't replace KDE 3.5...

The only other desktp environment that I consider almost as good as KDE 3.5 is XFCE.

 

What would happen if I upgrade a KDE 3.5 mdv2008.1 or 2009.0 box to 2009.1, will KDE 3.5 be automatically replaced by KDE 4 or would I still be able to use the KDE 3.5 present from the previous version of Mandriva?

Edited by tux99
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Could it be possible to install koffice 1.6.3 packages from mdv2008.1 in 2009.0?

Has anyone tried this already?

The only report that I've seen of anyone having tried it (without success) is in this thread:

http://forum.mandriva.com/viewtopic.php?t=...ghlight=koffice

 

What would happen if I upgrade a KDE 3.5 mdv2008.1 or 2009.0 box to 2009.1, will KDE 3.5 be automatically replaced by KDE 4 or would I still be able to use the KDE 3.5 present from the previous version of Mandriva?

The latest report that I've seen is that the upgrade process is still being worked out. I think that the intention is to replace KDE3.5 with KDE4, but achieving this is probably very complicated.

 

Jim

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"and from what I read KDE 3.5 will still be supported for several years by the developers."

 

This is not the case. KDE 3 is already essentially unmaintained upstream.

 

2009 Spring will not include KDE 3 as a usable desktop (some KDE 3 packages remain so we can build critical apps that haven't been updated yet, but you can't log in to the desktop).

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"and from what I read KDE 3.5 will still be supported for several years by the developers."

 

This is not the case. KDE 3 is already essentially unmaintained upstream.

 

2009 Spring will not include KDE 3 as a usable desktop (some KDE 3 packages remain so we can build critical apps that haven't been updated yet, but you can't log in to the desktop).

 

I was refering to the following:

 

"Meme 1: What is the future of 3.5?

 

This year, as with most years since KDE3 emerged, there have been huge deployments of KDE 3 based software. These deployments will not shift for years to come, no matter what KDE4 is. This is because large institutional deployments (government, corporate, educational, etc) typically have 3-7 year cycles (sometimes even longer) between major changes. Patches and security fixes? Sure. Major revamps? No. This alone ensures that KDE3 will remain supported for years. Why? Because there are users. That is how the open source dev model works: where there are users, there are developers; as one declines so does the other. The developers tend to be a step ahead of the users for software that is progressive, but you'll also find that they have a foot in the here and now too (as well as the past, often).

 

KDE3 is still open in our svn so that bug fixes, security fixes, etc. can continue to be made. KDE 3.5.x is a rather solid desktop system and really doesn't need a huge amount of work given what it is today;"

 

http://aseigo.blogspot.com/2008/01/talking-bluntly.html

 

 

To be honest I consider dropping KDE 3.5 from Mandriva so soon a big mistake (especially if it wants to aim more for corporate customers), I can understand that Mandriva has limited resources, but the fact that KDE 3.5 is not changing anymore (apart from bug fixes) should mean that little work is required to keep it packaged up for new Mandriva releases, at least in 'Contrib'.

 

This is one of the problems with Linux and a reason why it struggles to become mainstream on the desktop, developers want 'cool' but unstable bleeding edge, software which is still work in progress, while normal users just want a reliable stable familiar looking desktop.

The posts by 'blackbelt_jones' match my thoughts exactly:

http://ubuntuforums.org/showthread.php?t=967253

 

I might be exploring PCLinuxOS (the upcoming 2009 release) more too, as they are still committed to KDE 3.5.

Edited by tux99
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There might be some team wishing to fork KDE 3.5 in the future, but since the code is both complex and huge, I rather doubt it.

 

Yes, I read about that, while that could be a good idea, I don't really care, KDE 3.5.10 is next to perfect, who says that software has to constantly change to be better? All it needs is that it still gets bug fixes and that distros still offer it as package, after all you can still even get the ancient unmantained fvwm2 as an official Mandriva package!!

Edited by tux99
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koffice2 will be available in Mandriva 2009 Spring release with KDE4.2

It is very unlikely that koffice will be packaged for 2009.0

KDE3.5 will be dropped from 2009 Spring (except, perhaps, to the extent required to support applications for which there is not yet a KDE4 version available)

 

Adam or anyone else doing official Mandriva packages, is there any chance that the current koffice 1.6.3 could be packaged up for Mandriva 2009.0?

 

I would do it myself if it wasn't such a large software suite that needs to be packaged up into dozens of rpms...

 

I'm pretty sure there is demand for it, I doubt I'm the only one missing it.

 

P.S: I actually tried to install the koffice 1.6.3 packages from 2008.1 in 2009.0 (throwaway test install under vmware), the installation went fine but they don't work apparently because of the changed path structure of kde 3.5 (/opt/kde3), they can't find some libraries, I tried to fix that with symlinks but had no luck and things were getting very messy...

Edited by tux99
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I don't think anyone within MDV has time to do it, no. The official KDE team has to work on KDE 4 for 2009 Spring and fixing bugs in 2009, and they're only a very few people. As dexter said, you could try rebuilding it yourself.

 

tux: fvwm is a single package that's very easy to build and has little in the way of external dependencies. KDE is...not. It's organizationally messy to include both KDE 3 and KDE 4 and it results in some compromises, it's not a sustainable situation for multiple releases.

 

Yes, there are big organizations stuck on KDE 3 so any security issues will likely be patched, and maybe any bugs that some sufficiently big organization considers important enough to pay to have fixed. But that's about it. None of the core KDE devs who get to choose what they work on, are working on KDE 3 any more. Just check the SVN commit logs, if you want to see. KDE 4 is where all the effort is focused now.

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I tried to build koffice 1.6.3 from the 2008.1 srpm on 2009.0 now, the spec file is complex (44 kbytes big) and I have little experience in building rpms so I'm not at all sure what to change, I changed all %_... to %_kde3_... but the rpmbuild still bombs out after a long time when it's building the kross/api/ subdir with some errors like this:

undefined reference to `Kross::krossdebug(QString const&)'

 

I have made sure that I have no kde4 packages installed and all dependencies to build koffice are there (at least I checked all the ones defined in the spec file and I get no errors with regards to missing build dependencies).

This is all on a fresh unadulterated 2009.0 install in a vmware virtual machine.

 

Where are those %_kde_... definitions defined? Am I supposed to have them in my ~/.rpmmacros file or where else?

 

So with my limited rpm building knowledge I'm stuck, unless you have any suggestions I will have to give up.

Edited by tux99
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An example would look something like this

%{_kde3_libdir}/kde3/*

You may also need to edit the build, and you do need to edit the configure sections. I've had some luck with

%build
export KDEDIR=%{_prefix}
%configure_kde3

or

%build
export QTLIB=%qt3dir
%configure_kde3

and it's not recommended, but I've also had to edit the /etc/rpm/macros.d/kde3.macros file to complete a build. However save an original kde3.macros file to replace it when you are finished, or it will screw up other builds.

 

Please note that not all kde3 things will build with this current kde3/kde4 setup properly, simply because of the current location of kde3. As dexter already knows, I've not been able to successfully build krusader1.9 to install to /opt/kde3, but I have successfully built it to install to /usr and /usr/lib/kde3 and it works ok for me.

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For undefined references, try just adding:

 

%define _disable_ld_no_undefined 1

 

to the top of the spec file. It's a workaround not a fix, but that's not actually that important in this case.

 

edit: none of the %*dir macros are at issue here, this is simply a code bug. But for reference, they're defined in /etc/rpm/macros.d/kde3.macros .

Edited by adamw
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