[PyQt] A couple of question about PyKDE4

[Jim Bublitz]

On Tuesday 05 February 2008 11:49, Torsten Marek wrote:
> Hi all,
>
> Debian's KDE team has started to package KDE 4.0 quite some time ago,
> and they have asked me if I had plans to package PyKDE 4.0.
>
> Before I start out with PyKDE4, I have a couple of questions:
> - what is the preferred build system? cmake or configure.py? Will any of
> these build system vanish in the future?
>
> - are there going to be separate releases of PyKDE4, or will everything
> be coordinated with the KDE releases?
>
> - is there any high-level documentation about krosspython? Forgive my
> ignorance, but I've never come across it. (I'd *guess* that it's for
> embedding PyKDE4 scripts as components in KDE programs)
Hi Torsten -

On Tuesday 15 January 2008 08:40, you wrote:
> Hi Jim,
>
> Debian's KDE team has started to package KDE 4.0 quite some time ago,
> and they have asked me if I had plans to package PyKDE 4.0.
>
> It's been quite some time since I've done serious work with PyQt and
> PyKDE, my packages are in maintenance mode mostly. I'd actually like
> PyKDE4 to be an opportunity to get a good look at KDE 4.0 and probably
> do some GUI programming again.
>
> Before I start out with PyKDE4, I have a couple of questions:
> - what is the preferred build system? cmake or configure.py? Will any of
> these build system vanish in the future?

I haven't looked lately, but I think Simon is using cmake with the KDE SVN 
version. I'll be continuing to use configure.py. I'm pretty sure Simon will 
want to go with/stay with cmake, and that I'll stay with the configure.py 
setup. The latter depends on sip support, so if Phil changes that, I'll have 
to change my setup/install stuff, but it's likely I'll stay with some kind of 
Python scripting.

Of course nothing lasts forever, but I don't see anything that would change my 
mind in the near future.

> - are you going to make separate releases of PyKDE4, or will everything
> be coordinated with the KDE releases?

I'll probably do separate releases - I'm behind again and won't be releasing 
for a month or two. What Simon has put in KDE SVN should be current and 
reasonably complete, and will likely stay that way. 

We're a little out of sync at the moment because he's still using the original 
PyKDE tools (presip + scripts) to develop PyKDE. My holdup is largely 
finishing a new toolset for PyKDE based on Ply (Python Lex-Yacc) rather than 
a handwritten parser. 

There's also a better set of documentation and a documentation viewer 
(pykdedocs) that integrates tutorials, example programs, docs and will let 
you browse other docs (Python, PyQt, Qt, KDE, etc) locally or online. I don't 
know if Simon has included that yet. The viewer software is all PyKDE4 based, 
so I have had a chance to test out a lot of the GUI and KParts/KHTML related 
stuff, and it was working very nicely.

The Ply-based tools will make it a lot easier to develop docs from the KDE doc 
set and is a much easier to maintain bunch of code.

The only thing missing in PyKDE4 is Phonon support, which is a little messy 
(or was last time I looked).

> - is there any high-level documentation about krosspython? Forgive my
> ignorance, but I've never come across it. (I'd *guess* that it's for
> embedding PyKDE4 scripts as components in KDE programs)

Kross is for embedding Python scripts in KDE apps - that could use PyKDE (I 
think), but isn't dependent on it or sip.  I think Sebastian Kugler 
(sebas at kde.org) is the lead developer  - we've exchanged a few messages 
(email or at dotKDE - don't recall which), but there isn't any connection 
between Kross and PyKDE.

I haven't seen any Kross docs, but haven't looked in a while (that's about the 
third or fourth time I've said something like that - I am a little behind on 
most of this).

Jim