[kde-community] Request to join KDE Incubator for KScreenGenie

[Laszlo Papp]

On Fri, Apr 17, 2015 at 8:59 AM, Boudhayan Gupta <me at baloneygeek.com> wrote:
> On 17 April 2015 at 13:08, Laszlo Papp <lpapp at kde.org> wrote:
>> On Fri, Apr 17, 2015 at 8:21 AM, Boudhayan Gupta <me at baloneygeek.com> wrote:
>>> Hi all,
>>>
>>> Over the past few weeks, I have been writing a new screenshot
>>> application for KDE. I'm calling it KScreenGenie, and the code is
>>> currently online at https://github.com/BaloneyGeek/KScreenGenie.
>>>
>>> I initially started out by trying to help out in porting KSnapshot to
>>> KF5, but it struck me that there was a lot of duplication in the code,
>>> major changes in the design would be required to support Wayland, and
>>> that there was support for a whole bunch of strange image grabbers,
>>> including one which allows one to capture a single widget in the
>>> application (which doesn't even work properly in KF5/Qt5). In all (at
>>> least for me), it seemed easier to write something new from scratch
>>> and copy over some of the code from KSnapshot.
>>>
>>> So I've gone ahead and done this, and I'd like to request the KDE
>>> community to weigh in and see if this can some day replace KSnapshot.
>>>
>>> Some of the technical changes are listed below:
>>>
>>> * QtQuick/QML based UI
>>> * Native backend for image capture (doesn't use the Qt pixmap capture
>>> APIs). Allows for greater control with multimonitor setups. Currently
>>> only an X11 backend exists, written using only XCB and using KScreen
>>> for monitor layout information. Writing a backend isn't difficult (one
>>> of my goals was to make writing a Wayland backend very easy once an
>>> API becomes available).
>>> * More stuff in the README file in the repo (I know calling it a KDE
>>> app and the eventual replacement for KSnapshot right now - on GitHub -
>>> is a bit early and possibly pretentious, sorry, but since I wrote it
>>> with the express purpose of replacing KSnapshot, I thought I'd save me
>>> an extra step by not giving it a temp name / KAboutData code).
>>>
>>> I've been active on the IRC channels while I was coding this (I'm
>>> BaloneyGeek, hi!), and I'd like to thank Martin Graesslin who has been
>>> a big help through the coding process, and has guided me on what to do
>>> on more than one occasion. Having "officially" been part of the
>>> community for only two months, I'd also like to thank Valorie
>>> Zimmerman for showing me the way, so as to speak, by showing me how
>>> things are done around here, and pointing me to the Incubator.
>>>
>>> -- Boudhayan Gupta
>>> _______________________________________________
>>> kde-community mailing list
>>> kde-community at kde.org
>>> https://mail.kde.org/mailman/listinfo/kde-community
>>
>> Looks good to me.
>>
>> IMHO, it was already a mistake not to start it as a KDE project from
>> day one with a scratch repository. This looks like a clear KDE case to
>> me, so this Incubator process looks a bit superfluous should you have
>> chosen the KDE infrastructure from the beginning.
>> _______________________________________________
>> kde-community mailing list
>> kde-community at kde.org
>> https://mail.kde.org/mailman/listinfo/kde-community
>
> I'm working on GitHub for two reasons - one, I'm still not clear on
> how to set up a scratch repo on KDE, and it was faster for me to just
> push to GitHub than Google around,

I have been following this entry for years and it just works. Would it
be possible for you to try out and report any difficulties? If there
are any, the KDE community oughto strive for explaining those.

https://community.kde.org/Sysadmin/GitKdeOrgManual#Personal_scratch_repositories

> and two - this is the big one - my
> college blocks ssh access so I can't push to KDE Git all the time,
> only when I go out to an area with good cell reception and connect
> with 3G. GitHub lets me push over HTTPS.

If you read the page that I linked above, you can see that the KDE
infrastructure has prepared for this to a certain extent. I had had
such situations like yours in the past and I was able to get through.
I am not sure if things still work these days, but if not, would the
sysadmins be able to assist?

I do not mean to lessen the Incubator effort, but getting the KDE
infrastructure right is more fruitful than avoiding that due to the
difficulties and then going through the Incubator project.

Having said that, I like your project idea. :-)