[kde-linux] KDE 4 is Coming--how to do it?

[James Richard Tyrer]

David Baron wrote:
> Soon, hopefully, a releasable or release version of KDE4 will be available. 
> The question I have is how to make the upgrade.
> 
> History: I had kde2, then kde3 from the beginning from Knoppix and then Debian 
> Sid. At some point, Debian Sid made a transition that made kde3 uninstallable 
> for a long period. So I removed the Sid version entirely and built subsequent 
> kde3 versions using Konstruct. Takes a bit, will occasionally fail somewhere, 
> but does the job. This is what I am running at present. ALL kde stuff 
> including everything I compile for kde is in $KDEDIR/bin with components in 
> the appropriate lib and share directory trees.
> 
> Come KDE4. There will be a new $KDEDIR? How do I keep previously compiled kde 
> apps and their components (I assume they will still run, either off the new 
> kde4/qt4 libs or with the old ones--if I need the old ones, then keeping them 
> in place and having the old $KDEDIR on the exec path and load paths should do 
> it, wasting loads of disk space, but ...).
> 
> If I want to install KDE4 from .deb packages? New $KDEDIR is /usr. 
> 
> I would hope backwards compatibility IS there and I simply need to make the 
> load paths use the new libraries. Even so, there is soooo much in $KDEDIR, I 
> have little way to track it to move them into /usr/local or such.
> 
It is really fairly simple.  You need to install KDE for in a new 
directory.  E.G. KDE3 in "/usr/kde-3/" and KDE4 in "/usr/kde-4"  You 
need to install Qt-4.x.y.  It is different in that you put the source 
with your other sources and then "make install" like with other stuff. 
You can install that in its default: "/usr/local/Troltech/Qt-4",  Just 
put it in your ld.so.conf file.

The issue is that you need different environment settings to run KDE3 
vs. KDE4 (you also need to have the environment set correctly to compile 
KDE4).  This is probably best accomplished by using scripts.

-- 
JRT