[Kde-nonlinux] Re: Interesting in getting KDE to compile with Forte?

[Michael Matz]

On Thu, 14 Feb 2002, Garrett Conaty wrote:

> I'm working on deploying KDE (2.2.2 or 3.0) on Solaris for use with
> the OpenPKG distribution.  I've built KDE successfully using GCC 3.0.3
> but always get various errors when using the Sun Forte compiler.

At different points in the past KDE was compiling with Workshop CC (and
that were the buggy versions, which also explains, that sometimes the
result wasn't runnable).  So it definitevely once worked.

> Is there any interest in so doing?

We are interested to have KDE compiling on as many as possible
platforms/compilers.

> I'm reluctant to do it just to do it, but if there were a noticeable
> performance increase I think it would be well worth it.

I'm not really sure, if performance is that much better with workshop.
After all it's a GUI idling most of the time ;-)  Though possibly workshop
has better support for Solaris' quirks for dynamic loading which might
give a boost out-of-box without fiddling with ld.config.

Although given the history of workshop I also have not that much
confidence in Forte understanding C++ correctly, or producing correct
code.  But I never tried, so YMMD.

> Could any of the KDE gurus lend a hand?  I've got the ability to debug
> the build process and fix things that are breaking, but I've not
> worked on the guts of KDE and hence would have to overcome the
> learning curve to become familiar with the code/design philosophy.

Well, for fixing compile/build bugs there's not much design philosophy
needed ;-)  Keep it clean would be a general (though helpless) remark.
Generally: build on your machine, fix the things to make it work for you,
post the patches or ask (specific) questions on the lists.

Generally we prefer if the code itself is not changed that much (for build
failures that is), as long as it's valid ISO-C++ (doesn't apply to
#includes or #defines sometimes).  Depending on the problem at hand we
might prefer autoconf hackery, or general changes to the build system
(don't be afraid).  But most certainly we prefer to first look at the
changes ;-)


Ciao,
Michael.