====================================================================== I have forwarded this message to the list at the request of Mikhail T. ======================================================================

Hello!

As you may have heard, FreeBSD stopped maintaining KDE3 ports ("frozen" at 3.5.10) several years ago. Though they are still available (and the binary packages are still being built for new OS-releases), the maintainers switched to KDE4.

I don't need to explain to you, why I do not think, KDE4 is a good replacement for KDE3 (my own primary objection was having to redo all customizations in ~/.kde/), so I'd like to explore creating KDE-Trinity ports alongside with (and eventually replacing) KDE-3 ones.

Obviously, the effort will be gradual and I'd like to take advantage of as much existing stuff as possible. For example, can TQt3 simply replace the Qt3 -- without breaking the existing ports? For that, TQt3 needs to provide the same q-symbols alongside the new tq-ones...

How about sub-pieces? For example, FreeBSD has for years maintained the port of qmake separately from that of the Qt-library -- to avoid having to rebuild the tool completely for every minor update to the latter. Other optional pieces of Qt3 (such as, for example, database back-ends) also live as separate ports.

If I were to switch (upgrade?) the main library to TQt3, will these sub-pieces continue to build and work, or do I have to ensure, ALL Qt3-users (and that's hundreds of ports today) are switchedat once?

Beyond the (T)Qt3 foundation, can I switch kdelibs3 to Trinity without /simultaneously/ switching kdebase3, kdenetworks3, and kdegraphics3? Obviously, I'd want to eventually switch them all, but it'd be much easier, if I could do it piecemeal, rather than all at once...

I'd also like to ask about the "roadmap" -- there is a Trinity-14 project, which warns about "breaking backwards compatibility". Does this simply mean ABI-changes (if API is preserved, this is easy to deal with)? Or will the dreaded changes to configuration format (stuff already under user's ~/.kde/) come and bite me again?

Thanks a lot for suggestions. Yours,

-mi

P.S. I see people have reported running Trinity on their FreeBSD machines already. Please, let me know of any patches or other tricks still (in 3.5.13.1) necessary to build on the OS. Collaborators and testers would also be welcome.