QZeitgeist and Phonon

[John Layt]

On Monday 07 March 2011 23:58:08 Trever Fischer wrote:
> Very recently, we introduced an optional build time dependency on
> QZeitgeist. Today, someone said I should mention this to k-c-d. So here
> goes:

That was me, I was just concerned we were introducing a new technology and 
library dependency into KDE without a proper understanding of the consequences 
or much awareness of it happening.

The diff for this change can be found at 
https://projects.kde.org/projects/kdesupport/phonon/phonon/repository/diff?rev=94af71c5b5542766168594e432086b8cbbd77242&rev_to=b550ea553da5a4722242a3d6a453ad6bae34a6d1

> * What is QZeitgeist?
> A library that neatly wraps the Zeitgeist dbus API with some QObjects.

Has there been a stable release of qzeitgeist yet, or plans to make a stable 
release with a api/abi guarantee?  I see it is in Gitorious, any plans to move 
it to KDE infrastructure or kdesupport and the KDE review that would include?

> * Okay, but what is Zeitgeist?

Could you also just touch on why Nepomuk isn't the right tool for this?  I'm 
vaguely aware they are seen as complimentary (afaik Zeigeist == when , Nepomuk 
== what), but a reminder for those of us not following the semantic stuff 
would be good.  How well do they integrate (if that even makes sense)?

> * How does this fit into Phonon?

Just to confirm this is an opt-in setting by the media player itself?  I guess 
the players would need to make it very obvious an option in the api as I'm 
sure there's people who would hate for all their fluffy pink unicorn video 
viewing to get logged ;-)

> 1) It is a new *optional* build-time dependency. If Phonon is compiled with
> QZeitgeist, but zeitgeist isn't installed, stuff still works. Once
> zeitgeist is installed, the dbus interfaces work their magic.

So just to confirm the build time dependencies for qzeitgeist itself are 
really only dbus and qt, you don't need Zeitgeist?

What's the runtime footprint of zeitgeist itself?  It appears to have a heavy 
dependency on python, gnome and gobject (at least that's what the openSUSE 
packages require)?  Can it be stripped down to the most basic storage layer 
and api for lighter install and runtime requirements?  Does it need yet 
another storage server to be running?

> 2) The zeitgeist developers (and even the Phonon devs) would absolutely
> *love* to see more KDE apps use Zeitgeist. Its pretty cool.

Cool indeed, even cooler if its nice and light and we get a KDE front-end for 
it :-)

Could you also drop a line to the kde-buildsystem and kde-packager lists so 
they know of the new requirement?

Cheers!

John.