[Nix-dev] KDE updates and call for maintainers

[Thomas Tuegel]

Hello nix-dev!

I am pleased to announce that I have just opened a pull request [1]
for the latest KDE updates. As some of you know, I have been working
on new KDE 5 and Qt 5.5 packages for some time. Here is a summary of
the changes:

* Plasma 5.3.2 -> 5.4.2
* Frameworks 5.10 -> 5.15
* Applications 15.04.3 -> 15.08.2
* KDE and Qt package expressions conform to the conventions used
throughout Nixpkgs. I believe this will open these expressions up to
new contributors.
* KDE 5 and Qt 5.5 applications are wrapped so that they work
correctly outside the KDE desktop. Any such application that does not
work should be considered a bug and warrants a GitHub Issue.

KDE and Qt applications now use wrappers very extensively. To
forestall controversy on this change, let me point out that
introducing the wrappers fixed unrelated bugs in several packages that
I had long-ago given up on fixing. In other words, there is clear
empirical evidence that these wrappers are a significant improvement.

So much for the good news, on to the bad. I have intentionally left a
large number of KDE Applications packages un-packaged. There are too
many for me to be the sole maintainer. I will continue to maintain the
ones I consider "essential" for a working desktop, including the
localization packages, and I will continue to maintain the ones I use.
There are 248 packages in KDE Applications, I simply cannot test them
all. It would be dishonest for me to list myself as the maintainer,
and it would be a waste of my time to package programs that aren't
going to be maintained. The silver lining is, many of the KDE
Applications are re-released KDE 4 applications, so we won't really
lose that many packages. I hope other developers will step in to fill
the void, now that I have simplified the KDE packaging process. I plan
to continue maintaining the other 178 KDE packages.

I'm happy to take comments and suggestions here and on the GitHub page
[1]. I will leave the pull request open until I have addressed such.

Regards,
-- 
Thomas Tuegel

[1]. https://github.com/NixOS/nixpkgs/pull/10731