Kubuntu and AppStream

[Harald Sitter]

On Wed, Jul 2, 2014 at 2:46 AM, Aleix Pol <aleixpol at kde.org> wrote:
> I'm sending this e-mail because I would like to know what's the opinion of
> Kubuntu regarding this change. Does Kubuntu also want to do the change?

yes

> Are there impediments?

yes... Lack of tech and the fact that ubuntu in general doesn't have a
concrete plan for switching at this point (which also is related to
the tech). I've only talked about it briefly but for full blown
support there is a number of things that need to be implemented as the
idea is to ship the data via the repositories themselves which in turn
means that apt needs to grow support for this (it'd bascially fetch
the appstream data on a per-repo basis concurrent to the actual
package list as it were). And on the server side launchpad's build
infrastructure supposedly needs to grow support for generation of the
data (with app-install-data the data is currently created off-site
from a full-archive-mirror ... it's all very nasty).

> Is there anything KDE should do to make this happen?

nothing comes to mind

Quoting verbatim on how this should probably work:
[11:10] <mvo> apachelogger: my understand is that this is the goal,
yes. the data is gathered at the archive server via some mechanism
(package inspection e.g. at build time). then a yaml file is generated
and placed next to the Packages file. this is something that I want to
support with apt, but there is no plan about integrating the
generation of the data into archive.ubuntu.com right now
[11:11] <mvo> apachelogger: I think noone is opposed and we would
certainly welcome help, e.g. via support in apt-ftparchive or
launchpad

I suspect if debian-kde wants to switch they already have a solid plan
for the tech? If not then I think realistically we are not looking at
adoption before 2015 (which is when their next release is planned
anyway I think). Until then we'll probably have to hold on to
app-install-data. That is to say: for 14.10 we'll not be able to
switch away from app-install-data; 15.04 maybe if we can muster some
resources to get the proper tech going.

HS