A little review of kdecore & kdeui

[Thiago Macieira]

Benjamin Meyer and I got together this last weekend and went over all the 
classes in libkdecore and libkdeui (trunk) and tried to classify each one 
into one of the following categories:

- stays in the library
- move to another library (kdecore -> kdeui, for instance)
- deprecate and move to kde3support, if we have one
- deprecate and rollback functionality into Qt
- separate it out of the core libraries, into a Tools library
- remove completely

We were rather aggressive when classifying, so I'm expecting some 
controversy :-P

A bit of explanation is necessary for the "tools library" concept: we'd 
like to get some of the classes out of the intricacy that is kdecore, 
kdeui and create a module containing classes that can be reused by 
applications freely. Right now, we have the policy that "if any 2 
applications from different modules require the same class, move it to 
kdelibs": we'd like to see it changed to a higher threshold to enter the 
main libraries, but create a repository of "nice things" so that one 
doesn't have to reimplement for each app.

However, this poses the problem of how exactly to provide those: should 
they be provided in source code form? Or in a static library? If it's a 
static library, keep in mind that they don't contain dependency 
information, so what other libraries can they depend upon? Qt? kdecore? 
kdeui? kio?

Finally, the "rollback functionality into Qt" is a tentative proposal: 
they haven't been written yet. However, given the reaction the other 
developers had when the list was on the white board here in the office, 
it's quite likely...

-- 
Thiago Macieira  -  thiago (AT) macieira.info - thiago (AT) kde.org
  thiago.macieira (AT) trolltech.com     Trolltech AS
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