KLibrary: what is it good for?

[Martin Graesslin]

On Wednesday 19 March 2014 15:19:12 Alex Merry wrote:
> On 19/03/14 14:29, Alex Merry wrote:
> > While trying to clean up KDE 4 references in KService, I've been looking
> > at KLibrary.
> > 
> > This basically does two things: it has a factory() method that has been
> > deprecated since before kdelibs 4.0.0, and it does some extra lookup
> > magic.
> > 
> > KLibrary::factory() is used by KPluginLoader for compatibility magic
> > (this has been compatiblity code since 4.0.0, I think, and has a KDE5:
> > remove comment).
> > 
> > As far as I can tell, the library lookup magic was originally to look
> > for plugins in a module directory specified by KComponentData.  Now that
> > this has been removed, it appears to just messily duplicate QLibrary's
> > own internal lookup logic, except that it looks in "kf5" subdirectories
> > of QCoreApplication::libraryPaths() (and prints a -- misleadingly worded
> > -- warning if a library starting with "libkdeinit5_" was not in this kf5
> > subdirectory).
> > 
> > With this in mind, I would suggest ditching the (pre-KDE-4) compatiblity
> > stuff and putting KLibrary into kde4support as essentially a typedef for
> > QLibrary.  KPluginLoader might still want to check the kf5 subdirectory,
> > since that's the value of ${PLUGIN_INSTALL_DIR} in KDEInstallDirs.cmake.
> > 
> > Alternatively, we could keep KLibrary where it is, but remove everything
> > except for the lookup magic (which probably wants cleaning up).
> 
> Note that KSocks and KLibLoader in kde4support both use
> KLibrary::factory().  KSocks could be removed, as LXR says nothing uses
> it.  KLibLoader is used by a depressing number of things, given it has
> been deprecated since kdelibs 4.0 (KLibrary is also used by quite a few
> things, but that was never totally deprecated).

That sounds like moving KLibrary as it is to kdelibs4support and not using a 
typedef.

/me puts removing KLibrary in KWin to number 1 item on tomorrow's TODO list.

Cheers
Martin

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