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?
Here is a complete list:
dcopc dcopjava dcopperl dcoppython kalyptus kdejava kjsembed korundum python qtjava qtruby qtsharp smoke xparts
-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