[Kde-hardware-devel] 2009 introspective

[Kevin Ottens]

On Monday 4 May 2009 21:53:48 Aaron J. Seigo wrote:
> I'm putting together a "where are we now, where are we going" snapshot of
> as many of the "big pieces" in KDE 4 as possible, and I'd like some input
> from you on Solid.

And I finally get to replying this mail (huzzah!).

> In particular, what I'm looking for are 2-4 bullet items for each of these
> two questions:
>
> * What have been the defining achievements in the last year?

Regarding libsolid it has been mainly about polishing the integration in 
applications. It's hopefully getting pervasive now and doing its job (I'm 
seeing more uses of it in our apps, and received no hate mail so we should be 
doing ok). :-)

Regarding libsolidcontrol, it's been mainly about completing the APIs 
themselves and about having default desktop apps using them. The most notable 
efforts there are PowerDevil+Plasma battery applet and the coming network 
management applet. From the user point of view we're closing the gap with KDE 
3.5 there, and that opens the door for new features (especially in the network 
management space I think).

> * What are the main focus points and or goals for the project in 2009?

I can't talk too much for libsolidcontrol as I don't contribute to it much 
directly. I mainly monitor the situation and raise my grumpiness level when 
it's not going in a direction I like (which almost never happens thanks to the 
nice bunch we have there).

As for libsolid, for 2009 I plan to keep the API stable as usual. I'd expect 
only a few new classes. Most of the work will be internal, and the main focus 
for me will be: open the door to have several backends running in parallel. 
That's a necessary move to kill some of the limitations we have right now, but 
also to broaden the libsolid focus by making it able to also report about 
networked devices like any other devices (think UPnP there).

> If you're feeling extra helpful, you might want to also provide some input
> on:
>
> * What are the major pain points in your project right now?

Overall we're doing ok on the technical front. On the community front I think 
I haven't been doing great with the UPnP efforts as apparently there some 
things happening and I've a hard time being kept in the loop here (major risk 
then being having some work done twice, two competing solutions, etc.).

> * Outside of the core libs (kdecore, kdeui, kio, kfile) what are the most
> critical pieces of KDE technologies that your project is relying on?

For libsolid itself: Qt, Qt and only Qt. At runtime we use some optional kded 
modules, and some of the default apps in the Solid ecosystem are plasma 
applets.

Regards.
-- 
Kévin 'ervin' Ottens, http://ervin.ipsquad.net
"Ni le maître sans disciple, Ni le disciple sans maître,
Ne font reculer l'ignorance."
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