10 Dec
2011
10 Dec
'11
8:14 p.m.
On Saturday 10 December 2011 13:35:38 Timothy Pearson
wrote:
application.
which should not be any issue for
a window manager. Window managers use X
for
IPC as well you get D-Bus integration. Given that in the long run you want
to
migrate to Qt 4 and with that D-Bus anyway this sounds to me like a clear
plus.
Regardless, the process to drop/replace something is not trivial. This
project is not like other desktops; we don't just drop or replace things
on a whim.
The process would be:
1.) Develop a procedure to replace twin with kwin4 on users' test systems
2.) Those users would need to thoroughly test the replacement for many
months, noting any regressions and having them fixed upstream. Upstream's
response time and overall regression rate would also be evaluated at this
time.
3.) If the replacement after testing looks viable then a deployment
procedure would be created. twin would still be available, but kwin4
would be an option, either in build or in package installation
(preferred).
4.) If the majority of end-users choose kwin4 at this point, then twin
would be deprecated but still maintained as compilable in the TDE source
tree.
As you can see this is not trivial. These guidelines are be applied to
any integral component of TDE, including the HAL replacement, and are not
meant to be an onerous set of rules to prevent progress. Rather they are
meant to lessen the possibility of sudden unexpected breakage for corner
case users, as has been seen many times before in open source history.
Tim
Does it drag in other KDE 4 dependencies?
Obviously it depends on kdelibs and kde-runtime like any KDE The
dependencies will of course be better once frameworks 5 are released.
Considering the impact on a running environment I would say that all
depends
whether your users are using any KDE 4 applications or none. I would
be
surprised if your users would use no KDE 4
applications. So I think it
is
negligible.
Right away AFAIK we would lose DCOP integration, the window styles that come with TDE
you
are aware that KWin 4 ships the same window decorations (some got
moved to
kdeartworks) plus a theme engine? Do I have to point out that you broke
all
3rd party decorations for kwin3 in such a way that kwin won't start if you
selected one of those?
, and the kcontrol integration.
Which is
no issue as KWin allows to access the complete configuration from
each window. You could even ship the old KCMs for KDE 3.5 as those have
hardly
changed.
Users can already run
different window managers (compiz anyone?) so I would say this decision
should be made on a per-user basis. A set of instructions on the Wiki
for
configuring a users' session to use kwin4 wouldn't hurt. ;-)
I can only
recommend you to consider this offer from our side. Think about
what you actually want for your users. What is really important to you and
if
you really want to develop a window manager.