[Kde-games-devel] Status of games in SVN

[Ian Wadham]

On Wed, 11 Apr 2007 12:59 pm, Mauricio Piacentini wrote:
> Ian Wadham wrote:
> > So how can I "continue to run the KDE 3 versions as they are"?

> This is one of the questions I asked in the original email (or that I
> mean to ask, sorry for not being clearer.) I suppose it will be possible
> to run KDE3 applications in a KDE4 desktop, after installation of the
> appropriate libs (something most package systems can take care of.)
> Otherwise, people will go crazy, think about all the existing KDE3
> applications that are not ported so far. Maybe we are not there yet, and
> some libraries have to be renamed in order to make it work?
> This is probably a question for the core developers list. Does anyone
> know the answer to this question?
>
I raised this on kde-devel and received some reassuring answers from
several leading KDE developers.  See the thread "Will KDE4 be able to
run KDE3 apps?".  Some key points:

    - Major apps, such as KDevelop, will be doing just that.
    - Other areas, such as kdepim (Personal Info Manager) are in the
       same difficulties as we are.
    - Libraries, etc. will be named with a 4, so KDE3 and KDE4 apps
       can co-exist under the same prefix or path.
    - Otherwise a KDE3 app is just like any other Unix-based app, but
       might also start up some infrastructure apps, such as kdeinit.
    - We will probably be able to get away with "finishing features" for
       about two months after June 1.  That could include SVGizing and
       themeing, as already planned, but would not include major new
       stuff such as a re-write of the game-engine, I would imagine.
       Opinions will vary on how far we can push this.
    - The apps must be in SVN trunk and *running* on June 1, if they are
       to get into the KDE4 releases (my emphasis).  They must build with
       cmake and have a proper handbook.

Re KSirtet and friends, for example, we have till 1 June to "unbreak" them,
at least.  Otherwise they would have to be taken out of kdegames SVN
and brought back in for a later release, but meanwhile running in their
KDE3 form in the KDE 4.0 release cycle.  So we have a few options, as
I see it ... as you always thought we had, Mauricio ... but we must take
collective action over the final list for the June 1 cutoff.

> As the previous investigation shows, many of these old games are not
> playable right now, or are in a very poor state.
> 
My guess is that KSirtet and friends are not that badly broken.  The bugs
remind me of some that cropped up during conversion of KGoldrunner,
to do with low-level clock, mouse and co-ordinate functions, that were
not hard to fix but looked rather bad on screen.

> Some distros (like opensuse) already include only 2 or 3 games in
> their default kdegames package, the ones that the distro considers
> in best shape.
> 
Really?  I've been using SuSE for about 6 years (currently v 10.0), but
I'll be ditching it, unless they pull their socks back up !!!

All the best, Ian W.

P.S. We will need to re-visit and *test* the above assertions ... ;-)