Mixing KDE3 and KDE4

[Lubos Lunak]

 Hello,

 the 'mixing' in the subject refers to being able to run things from KDE3 and 
KDE4 at the same time, not just install them alongside. Currently, I'm aware 
of these issues:

- session management doesn't work - ksmserver restores "its" version (i.e. run 
KWrite from KDE3 in KDE4, you get the KDE4 version after next login)
- launching apps using .desktop files has a similar problem of launching 
the "native" version
- logout is delayed by waiting for the "other" kdeinit etc. to exit after a 
timeout

 I'd expect the list to be longer and therefore I'd like to collect all such 
problems. Some of these possibly don't exist with distros that install 
everything in /usr (I can't see how they want to install KWrite both from 
KDE3 and KDE4), but even there people e.g. may be interested in running other 
version they built from sources.

 To solve some of the above things I suggest the attached patches:

- there are scripts 'kde3' and 'kde4', to be used as wrappers when 
launching "foreign" KDE apps. They may need to be patched by specific 
distributions to run them from the proper prefix, set up some env. variables 
or whatever. They may also be extended to try to run the apps using kdeinit 
if possible for better performance.

 Does this look ok, or does somebody have a better idea?

- kdelibs is patched to make apps explicitly tell ksmserver their KDE version, 
ksmserver then will use kde3/kde4 if appropriate to launch such apps

- startkde is patched to immediatelly shut down "other" kdeinit (need some 
commits I did recently to be really fast)


(CC-ing packagers as they're most likely to know, but please keep the 
discussion on kde-core-devel, thanks)


-- 
Lubos Lunak
KDE developer
--------------------------------------------------------------
SUSE LINUX, s.r.o.   e-mail: l.lunak at suse.cz , l.lunak at kde.org
Lihovarska 1060/12   tel: +420 284 028 972
190 00 Prague 9      fax: +420 284 028 951
Czech Republic       http://www.suse.cz
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