[PyKDE] PyKDE-3.8 released

[Jim Bublitz]

Withing the last couple minutes I just emailed the PyKDE-3.8.0 
release to Phil for posting on the riverbankcomputing site. Phil 
normally posts the tarballs quickly if he's available. I just 
noticed I forgot to remove one (large) file from the top-level 
directory, so I may need to send Phil a revised tarball which 
may hold things up a little, but I'd expect it to turn up at 
http://riverbankcomputing.co.uk within the next couple of days.

I've tried to test this thoroughly, but I'd recommend packagers 
wait at least a few days to see what bugs turn up - I'll try to 
stay on top of those and get fixes out quickly. Testing was on 
SuSE 8.1/8.2, RH 9.0 and Mdk 9.1 - I haven't upgraded to SuSE 
9.0 or Mdk 9.2 yet.

What's New
=========

This release will build with KDE through 3.1.4. I haven't tested 
it with Python < 2.2 - I've tried to avoid using new Python 
features, but I'm using 2.2.2 or 2.3 exclusively for other 
stuff, and a lot of the new features creep in. If any Python 
version related problems show up, let me know and I'll fix them.

I've revised the docs extensively. There are now sections on 
installation, troubleshooting and build.py switches - please 
read those, especially if you've never built PyKDE before.

The class reference docs are NOT included with the rest of the 
HTML docs. There is a "class reference" page that explains how 
to use the new doc viewer and set it up to link to KDE classref 
docs (along with a URL for downloading them). You have the 
option of using the viewer or generating HTML docs that any 
browser can read - the code to do that is in the viewer too.

There is a new directory templates/ which has a number of program 
"skeletons" you can use as a base for your applications or just 
to play around with PyKDE. There are two sets - the annotated/ 
directory contains files with comments, the basic/ directory 
contains the same files with the comments stripped.

This release should contain the bug fixes that have appeared on 
the list over the last several months.

build.py for this release has changed from previous releases - 
some of the required files are in the build/ subdirectory. 
build.py will probably change again in the next release to be 
more similar to what Phil is doing with sip/PyQt4's build.py. 
Then again, it might not - build.py is one of the things I need 
to take a look at for the next release.

Future Plans
=========

My immediate plan is to respond as quickly as possible to bug 
fixes for this release. This will be the LAST "3" series (as in 
sip 3.8/PyQt 3.8) and also the LAST PyKDE to run on Python<2.3.
I do plan to support this release with bug fixes and to have this 
release available even after the next release is out, but I 
won't be extending the sip 3.8 version beyond KDE 3.1.4.

In the next couple of weeks I'll be starting on KDE3.2 and sip 
4.0 - there are enough changes in both categories that it's 
unlikely there will be a new PyKDE release before the end of the 
year. I need to revise my tools for 4.0 (already done for KDE 
3.2). 

I built the KDE3.2beta using konstruct over the last 24 hours. It 
required some hacking to get it to build and some stuff (apps) I 
just ignored errors on. I have a working version now and will 
start to develop against that. From the little bit I've played 
with it, it seems pretty good (a few things crash, but nothing 
major), so I expect the 3.2 final won't be too far away.

For the next few months I'll be working on:

1. presip (sip file generator) - bringing that up to speed for 
sip 4.0. I'm shooting for a public release of that in 4-6 months 
(maybe longer)
2. A tutorial for creating sip bindings (about half done)
3. PyKDE for sip 4.0/KDE3.2
4. Working with David Boddie on getting some of the "extras" 
released (KParts, KControl, IOSlaves, etc). David has done all 
the work on those and I'll just be looking at testing them, 
seeing what support they might need from PyKDE, and making them 
generally available. Those will probably be released separately 
from PyKDE (just because the next PyKDE is a ways off) and then 
included in a contrib/ directory as part of PyKDE.

Jim