[KDE/Mac] Giving up on kdeinit4 and friends

[Mario Fux]

Am Freitag, 29. August 2014, 08.11:38 schrieb Ian Wadham:
> Hi guys,

Good morning Ian

> I have decided to give up beating my head against a brick wall.

Too bad to hear but if it starts to annoy you and gives you bad feeling that's 
probably the best.

> From now on I will abandon any attempts to find out what kdeinit4,
> klauncher and kded4 (the KDE daemon) are actually doing and
> whether they have any usefulness at all in a non-KDE environment.
> 
> My most recent tests show that kdeinit4 blocks before it reaches the
> end of its initialisation.  It is waiting forever for a message from
> klauncher to say that it has started successfully, but klauncher on
> Apple OS X does not send such a message.  I believe this problem
> exists on both OS X and Windows.  It means that kdeinit4 does not
> go on to start up kded4, which is what should normally run our old
> friend kbuildsycoca4.
> 
> Had that worked, MacPorts users and developers could have avoided
> years of unhappy runtime experiences with KDE apps on OS X.
> 
> Fortunately we now have Nicolas' script to run kbuildsycoca4.

That sounds good.

> When I patched out the cause of the blockage, it started kded4
> and kbuildsycoca4 OK, but then it blocked again, waiting for a
> reply to say that kded4 had started.  AFAICS there is no method
> to provide such a reply, so maybe the Linux version of kdeinit4
> is not finishing its initialisation either.  See note [1].
> 
> I will now assume that kdeinit4, klauncher and kded4 are superfluous
> in Apple OS X and will concentrate on hacking Dr Konqi on Apple
> OS X into some sort of working shape that is independent of KDE
> core processes and non-portable objects like KCookieJar.

I still think it's important to see that first kdeinit(4) is an open question 
even for the kdelibs/KF5 people. And second feature development for kdelibs4 
ended years ago and eventhough there is still bugfixing done for kdelibs4 most 
of the power goes into KDE Frameworks 5 as the successor of kdelibs4. And 
let's not forget that there is not a huge amount of manpower of KF5 as well...

> That will benefit Marko and me at least and will enable any MacPorts
> user to report a bug on bugs.kde.org.

That sounds good, thanks!

> But good luck with that!  I get the impression there is nobody much
> minding the KDE 4 shop while everyone is out the back baking bread
> and icing cakes (Frameworks/KF 5 development).

Let's be cautious on deviding KDE in different groups. You (kde-mac) are part 
of KDE in the same way as everybody else. But we can't expect from people that 
work hard on KF5 on Linux and don't know anything about Mac OS X to help us. 
They have problems as well. So it's still mostly a big community with 
different knowledge. One thing I can think we could improve is bringing more 
of the core/lib/frameworks stuff to the kde-frameworks-devel and kde-core-
devel lists. But this might already happen my overview atm is not the best as 
I'm still quite busy with Randa and studies ;-).

> As you may know, I have repeatedly asked for help from a KDE core
> developer: not full time help, just a few pointers and some reviews of
> finished work.  Eventually, even though he must have been up to his
> eyeballs in work for the Randa gathering, Mario found someone on
> 5 August.  I have written several times to that guy with detailed info
> about Apple OS X, MacPorts, KDE on OS X, portability problems and
> a series of specific questions about Dr Konqi, kdeinit4 and friends.
> 
> Not one reply have I received.

Too bad. But I'm sure this guy had his reasons.

> That is why I am giving up on kdeinit4 and friends, though not on fixing
> KDE 4 bugs on Apple OS X when I can.  I am sending the guy this email
> on blind copy (BCC).

So do I.

> I must say I am very disappointed by all this.  I have given a lot of time
> to KDE in the last 12 years.  Where is the much-boasted KDE Community when
> you need it?

That I definitely don't like. I don't like it if you're disappointed as you 
put a lot of time in fixing and investigating. I still think that the KDE 
community (all of us) is great (and I definitely saw it in Randa some weeks 
ago) but we're all short on time and manpower. Ian don't lose faith in KDE but 
it might just go slower than we wish. And see about the current activity in 
kde-mac. It's amazing.

I hope you find back your joy in hacking on KDE code and send you some Swiss 
hugs

Best regards
Mario

> All the best, Ian W.
> 
> [1] Although kdeinit4 is not receiving the messages it expects during
>       its initialisation, it can still receive and process other messages
> on another (re-entered) code path, which gives the impression that it is
> working correctly when it is not.  This could be the case in Linux too.