23 Jan
2012
23 Jan
'12
1:48 a.m.
HOW CAN WE
BUILD A QUALITY PRODUCT IF NOBODY
UNDERSTANDS IT. Tim even
mentioned he won't mess with it because he
doesn't use
those languages. I
think we have to be kidding ourselves if we are
trying
to provide a
"quality product".
Seems to me that we need to start by finding the answers to
these questions:
-Which languages are involved? Looking at the source
in GIT, I think I see
Java, Perl, Python, C#, C, Ruby, XPart (whatever
that is), and Javascript,
plus some other stuff (written mostly in Perl) that
appears to be
autogeneration/framework code for C# and Java. Does
anyone see
anything that I may have missed or be misinterpreting? -Which of these languages do we have potential
maintainers
for?
-Which of these bindings have actually been used for
creating software?
Frex, Amarok has a Ruby dependency--will we need this
interface to
maintain/further develop it?
I'm not qualified to make decisions. I can only offer that Java, JavaScript, Perl,
Python, and Ruby are popular and not going away any time soon. DCop is important to
controlling Trinity apps from external apps and scripts.
To me, the important question is not which bindings to maintain but compiling the package.
If somebody wants to use their favorite language to hook into Trinity, let them have fun.
Right now the big issue is why compiling is such torture. Seems right now I'm the only
person trying. :)
-If there are bindings which have never been used, can
we
safely drop
them? My instinct is that most of them can probably
be dumped if they
were never used, but it would be nice to keep one set
(probably Python)
for those who want to code small interface modules for
personal use
without dipping into the morass of C++.
Somebody who has a clue about these things could help by surfing the web looking for
examples of how other people used these bindings. Possibly start at kde-look.org for
apps?
-If, after all that, we have modules that we want/need
to
keep, and no
maintainers, where do we go about looking for them?
That is, where
are the active communities for the relevant
languages? For Python I
expect the community centers around python.org, and for
Perl I would
probably try perlmonks, but I haven't been much involved
with Java
since before the Oracle buy-out, and have no familiarity
at all with
the other languages. Even if we decide that
maintaining bindings for
a given language is not important, it might be nice to
give the relevant
community a heads-up and see if anyone steps forward.
As many people have led themselves to believe Qt3 is dead, we might learn more about who
is supporting the bindings atmosphere by looking around as to what others are doing with
KDE4/Qt4. If we find nobody coding anything with a certain language binding, then we can
be reasonably sure nobody cares about doing likewise in Trinity.
Darrell