[PyKDE] PyKDE2 Announcement

[Bruce Sass]

On Sat, 9 Jun 2001, Jim Bublitz wrote:

> With assistance from Phil Thompson, I've been working on PyKDE2. I've basically
> been doing the more or less mechanical generation of *.sip files, and have just
> sent the first batch to Phil. Phil or someone else more competent than I am with
> SIP (that's a hint that volunteers would be appreciated) will be completing the
> more involved parts. I don't want to be overly optimistic, but I expect PyKDE2
> should appear, if only in an alpha form, sometime in the next several months.
>
> Progress to date:
>
> 1. kdecore, kdeui, and a new dcop module are about 95% complete and sent to
> Phil. I have actually run a small .py application using these, so we do have
> running code, but the remaining 5% to be completed includes some significant
> methods. As usual, the last 5% will probably take more time and effort than the
> first 95%.

So why not make what is done available as an alpha pre-release?

> 2. kio (another new module) and kfile (depends on kio) should be ready to send
> to Phil sometime next week - the *.sip files are all complete in a "first pass"
> fashion, but still need some cleanup and there are a few minor compilation
> issues with the generated cpp code. The modules in (1) and (2) represent (IMHO)
> the absolute minimum for a usable PyKDE2.

I guess that depends on what one wants to do with PyKDE...
95% is significant, surely that is enough for us end-users to start
compla^H^H^H^H^Hhecking it out.  ;)

> 3. I expect to also produce modules for kab, khtmlw (hopefully everything,
> which is *a lot*), kspell, and new module for kparts. The kfm module is
> obsolete.
>
> 4. PyKDE2 is a much larger (and hopefully richer) API than PyKDE1, and is
> forcing some upgrades to SIP and PyQt, and creating some issues that need to be
> resolved in the build and distribution areas. Just a couple of the problem
> areas: use of "namespace" which SIP doesn't currently support (I have a kludged
> workaround, but Phil will probably add support to SIP); some required k*.h
> files are not in the KDE binary distribution, but are only in the KDE source
> distribution.

Hmmm, when did KDE start doing a binary distribution.  I think anyone
wanting to play with a pre-PyKDE2 will know how to get the -dev (or
-devel) binary packages for KDE2 provided by the distribution they
use.

> At the moment the build process is not very clean, so I don't expect CVS to be
> available for a while (that's Phil's call). There will be a lot of code for
> this, so testers/bug fixers will be greatly appreciated once things are
> released. If you want to help prior to release, respond to the mailing list or
> to Phil.

I suspect that if you were to say, `here is a tarball of pre-PyKDE2',
finding testers would not be much of a problem.

> If you want to prepare for using this, I expect you will need Python 2.1,
> Qt2.3.0 and KDE 2.1.1 or 2.1.2. The KDE ClassRef documentation is also
> available somewhere on www.kde.org (developer section?), and is also necessary.

Aside from the Python-2.1 bit, this should not be a problem for
anyone using KDE2, eh.

Why not Python 2.0 and 1.5.2?
Ya, I know, the core Python developers would like to see everyone
switch to 2.1, then 2.2 as soon as it is released, but I don't think
1.5.2 will disappear for awhile yet.


- Bruce