The plugins are only part of the problem tough. The worst offender is KIO which we all agree is horrible dependency-wise currently. It is used by some provider plugins but also the FileItemActionPlugin (T12286 would help here). Most providers are rather fine dependency wise, but some have rather exotic dependencies such as KAccounts or nodejs. Having them somewhere else would certainly be welcome.

The plugins are only part of the problem tough.

Could you please elaborate what the other part is?

On the KF6 weekly @apol made the point that the framework should ship some providers to make the default installation useful and not just an interface without any plugins.

From looking at the jobs, they depend on KIOCore. Only the fileitemactions plugin depends on KIOWidgets.

IMHO the fileitemactions plugin is not part of the core framework, but rather integration in the KIO KFileItemActions users (like Dolphin).

Could it make sense to have it as a separate component and only optionally depend on KIOWidgets?

The KIOCore dependency is not going away with that, but I don't think that would be desirable in any way.

An idea would be to move this into the frameworkintegration repository.

Though then it would be out of the repo entirely. Not sure if you consider this an issue.

Sorry, I wasn't clear enough. I meant we can move the KFileItemActions integration. Or maybe even into plasma-integration and this way it rolls with Plasma, although changing release cycles has some problems.

Sorry, I wasn't clear enough.

I just wanted confirm that bit since I was not entirely sure how your opinion on moving some of the stuff to a separate repo is 😅

Or maybe even into plasma-integration and this way it rolls with Plasma

I don't think it is desirable since it is also useful for apps.