[PyKDE] PyKDE2 Announcement

[Jim Bublitz]

On 09-Jun-01 Bruce Sass wrote:
> On Sat, 9 Jun 2001, Jim Bublitz wrote:

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

Because it's pretty hacked up at the moment and requires some intermediate
manual editing/overwriting of the code SIP generates from the sip files I
created. Personally I think it'd be kind of like selling a Ford Explorer with
Firestone tires. 

I'm all in favor of "release early/often", but I have some pride about what
gets released too. And I think it's a bad idea to release too early, which this
is right now.
 
> 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.  ;)

When you see how long it takes to compile (KDE2 is big), you won't even have to
check out the actual code to start complaining :)

Part of the 5% is what requires some of the hand editing of generated
code (problems with abstract classes, and possibly a SIP problem - not sure),
but it's usable and can probably go out well before it's completed. I guess my
preference is that people be able to build it easily, which should be possible
in a few weeks. If it were just a matter of a few functions commented out, I
wouldn't care (and in fact that will probably be the case anyway).
 
> Hmmm, when did KDE start doing a binary distribution.

Binary as opposed to source RPM's.

> 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.

I don't believe the .h files in question are in the dev packages (unless I'm
missing one) - that's the problem. You need the complete source, which not
everyone will have (I never used to bother with it), and which complicates the
automake stuff, since even people who do have the complete src (tarball or RPM)
won't necessarily have it in a well-known location. My inclination is to
include the extra .h files in the PyKDE2 distribution.

I've only had broadband for a little over a month, so I'm still sympathetic
with those people who have slow links - KDE source is fairly large for some of
us, especially just to pick up a half dozen missing header files.
 
> I suspect that if you were to say, `here is a tarball of pre-PyKDE2',
> finding testers would not be much of a problem.

I think you're probably right - I'm eager to get on with developing apps with
this myself, because the more I look at it, KDE2 looks like a *very* nice
environment, especially if I can use it with things like Python and libs and Qt
Designer.

Phil has done an amazingly good job with SIP (IMHO) and continues to make
improvements, so I don't expect there to be much in KDE2 that won't be
accessible from Python.
 
>> 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.

KDE 2.1.1 is a lot more stable anyway. I probably overstated the Python
requirement.
 
> 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.

I agree here too - it annoys me to have to d/l lots of other stuff for no
good reason. Python >= 1.5 should work, as long as you compile with that. I
don't know of anything being done that requires Python 2 - Phil can probably
provide a more reliable answer. 

Jim