Timothy Pearson wrote:
>> If you enable the conflict statement, then you should also enable the
>> provides statement. I opened a bug that some packages miss it. It will
>> allow kdbg from the normal Ubuntu repository to work against the Trinity
>> libraries for example.
>
> Not really; that is only true while the ABI does not change.  It has
> changed significantly in Trinity, which will cause all kinds of symbol not
> found runtime errors when attempting to run binaries from the old official
> package.

Ok, I see. I still have one question though if you don't mind :)

I understood that binaries of all 3.5.x releases of KDE were backwards 
compatible. Also in my experience, I could always run older KDE3 apps 
against newer libraries. (Which means that the ABI would be backwards 
compatible I understand?)
I also understood that the current Trinity would basically be KDE 
3.5.12, but it is not compatible anymore with applications compiled 
against older KDE 3.5.x versions? (In my own experience it is though, 
but maybe my testing was too limited.)
What is the reason this compatibility wasn't kept? I guess staying 
compatible with applications compiled against previous versions is the 
most important thing when trying to get them into Debian & Ubuntu.


>> Does anyone know what the duties and requirements of an on-call package
>> manager would be? :)
>
> It is a somewhat convoluted process, with useful information somewhat hard
> to come by (I have very little knowledge in this particular area myself.)
>
> Some information is available here:
> http://www.debian.org/doc/maint-guide/
> http://wiki.debian.org/DebianMaintainer
> http://www.debian.org/devel/join/newmaint
>
> Honestly I would join a Debian developer's list and ask what would be
> involved in packaging and maintaining Trinity for Debian.  Much of the
> packaging can be cloned from the Debian packages on the QuickBuild system,
> but there are other responsibilities that you would need to agree to IIRC,
> including prompt security patch application and a few other things.

I will read these pages when I have some spare time. I cannot promise 
more yet right now unfortunately, but it seems good to discuss all the 
steps needed for this here. I still use KDE3 on many systems, so I'm 
quite motivated to look into this though. Thanks a lot for the information!

Best regards,
Julius