[PyKDE] PyKDE for sip 3.5 and 3.6

[Jim Bublitz]

PyKDE as recently released (PyKDE-3.5-1 and -2) should build
correctly with sip/PyQt 3.5. PyKDE *won't* build with recent
(April) sip snapshots or sip 3.6. Here's what's going on with PyKDE
and why:

PyKDE has a number of bugs (mostly pretty obscure, but still bugs)
which I'm locating only because I've started implementing unit
tests for most of the handwritten code in PyKDE. While this should
have been done a long time ago (and in fact was started on a long
time ago), time constraints have usually forced a choice between
releasing something or getting some minimal proper testing in place.

That in fact is the current situation - I could produce a sip 3.6
compatible PyKDE release in a few days and then keep up with sip
3.6 as it changes. However, that would eat into a lot of the time
available to write tests/fix bugs for PyKDE. So the likely sequence
is that there will be at least a '-3' release for PyKDE-3.5
*before* there is a sip 3.6 compatible release for PyKDE. Once a
good set of unit tests is in place, it won't be very time-consuming
to keep them current.

You may have noticed that sip 3.6 is somewhat of a moving target at
the moment. In my opinion that's a good thing - it would be a poor
situation if Phil's sip development was restrained by trying to
remain compatible with PyKDE, especially since I'd expect that sip
and PyQt have a much larger user base than PyKDE. The downside is
that at present PyKDE won't be in sync with the sip/PyQt snapshots.

Jim