[Digikam-users] building it for Mac OS / Windows

[Marcel Wiesweg]

> But it's unstable as hell. I usually get about 5 clicks until
> something makes it go down. Last time it took quite an amount of OS X
> with it, leaving me at a new login window.
> Therefor my unsaved notes in a text editor were lost and the command
> line given above is made up from memory.
> If I just be very carefully with my clicks it just stops loading
> preview thumbnails after about 5 pictures
>
> As the whole build with all the dependencies took about two days, I
> gave it a try on a windows machine while waiting.
> Of course there is no prebuild binary either. The website says so,
> but just redirects to the kde-on-windows site offering in 'kde
> installer', which just as macports compiles things from source.
> Albeit said on the website, there is no beta3 package availiable
> within the 'kde installer', so I took the beta1.
>
> It actually builds and starts! But it kept spitting error messages
> about not being able to connect to the dbus server with every other
> dialog box. That's probably the kde installers fault, which just
> didn't succeeded in preparing the whole kde environment.

I can't comment on KDE-on-Windows status. There was some trouble with writing 
a native DBus implementation.

>
> If this is the state of being for the final release of digikam 1.0.0,
> you better scratch that 'multi platform' off the website. Digikam is
> strictly mono-platform, and this platform is KDE.
> Whatever the KDE guys are saying, just because QT4 would enable it to
> run on other platforms than a KDE-based linux desktop theoretically,
> it is just not true at the moment.

I dont know about the current state but 0.10.0 was patched and tested by one 
of the KDE/Windows developers.

>
> So, while giving the older, non-beta releases another try, I have two
> questions:
>
> Is anybody testing and developing on Mac OS X or even windows
> machines and therefor interested in bug reports?

Noone of us has Mac OS X available, Gilles has been testing on Windows. (I 
could too, but have been lacking interest).
If you have a nice crash log just report it. If noone reports we think all is 
well. If someone reports, we may do something about it (especially if it's a 
crash with a good backtrace) - but keep in mind the problem that we can't 
test.

> Will the whole multi platform thing in general be actively supported
> by digikam, or just used as a sort of marketing buzzword and then
> rolled off to the KDE guys?

We don't roll off stuff, but if problems are caused by bugs in kdelibs or one 
of the pretty large number of depending libraries, in some cases we can help 
(like the recent bug in libpgf) but sometimes we can just tag the bug with the 
correct address.

>
> Thanks for the work done anyway, and willing to deliver those bug
> reports if wanted,
>
> Stefan
>
> Am 30.07.2009 um 23:20 schrieb Vlado Plaga:
> > Am Thu, 30 Jul 2009 18:25:01 +0200
> >
> > schrieb Vlado Plaga <rechner at vlado-do.de>:
> >> I haven't finished compiling "beta 3" on Mac OS yet, but since that
> >> might take a few hours, I'm already sending this e-mail now. At least
> >> it downloaded the sources and started compiling.
> >
> > Now compilation finished, but the program again crashes immediately
> > after startup.
> >
> > Note: I had to manually patch
> > digikam-1.0.0-beta3/libs/3rdparty/lqr/lqr_energy_priv.h
> >
> > like this:
> > http://trac.macports.org/browser/trunk/dports/graphics/liblqr/files/
> > patch-lqr__lqr_energy_priv.h?rev=51312
> >
> > The author of liblqr is aware of the problem, so in the next
> > release it
> > should be fixed:
> > http://liblqr.wikidot.com/forum/t-169529/small-patch-needed-to-
> > compile-liblqr-on-mac-os:change-upstream-package
> >
> > I guess it is something of a philosophical question why digiKam brings
> > its own private version of a library, instead of using the system
> > version (which in MacOS/MacPorts is already patched)... 

Probably because it was not available on major distributions at the start of 
development

> > or why
> > functionality such as this is included at all, although everyone using
> > digiKam might as well use the Gimp for complex image editing
> > functions.

We have a defined niche for our image editing functionality. We do not intend 
to be like Gimp, Krita (no multilayer, no tiles etc.) but we dont restrict the 
editor to crop+scale. You are free to use The Gimp.