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

[David Baron]

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.

Any advice?