Improving the templates in KDevelop/KAppTemplate

[Aleix Pol]

On Sun, Apr 6, 2014 at 11:57 PM, Simon Wächter <waechter.simon at gmail.com>wrote:

>  Hello there
>
> First a few words about myself: My name is Simon Wächter and I work as a
> software developer for an IT company in Switzerland. I use KDevelop for my
> daily work and my own projects. I want to contribute to the KDevelop
> project because I think that KDevelop is an awesome IDE and helps me to
> reach a better workflow.
>
> So now about the real content of this email: Because I use KDevelop for my
> daily work and as a starting point for developing KDE applications, I came
> in touch with the KDE project templates, provided by the KDevelop and
> KAppTemplate project. Sadly, I encountered a few "problems" with these
> templates. I can split these problems into two categories:
>
> 1.) Smaller problems
>
>    - Some KAppTemplate templates contain misleading variable names,
>    trailing whitespaces, commented lines etc. I asked Anne-Marie Mahfouf from
>    the KAppTemplate project to fix/improve these problems and she gave me her
>    ok
>    - The KDevelop Qt project templates are also improvable, so I talked
>    with Sven Brauch (scummos) about the situation. The idea is that I improve
>    these templates the following week
>
> 2.) Bigger KAppTemplate problem
>
>    - KAppTemplate contains several interesting templates. The problem is,
>    that the package is just a suggestion for KDevelop (At least in Debian).
>    This means, many KDevelop users don't know about this package. This is
>    especially bad for new developer that want to develop a Qt/KDE application.
>    I also had this problem and was quite happy that there were some examples
>    (Beside the techbase tutorials)
>
> So my questions is: Is there a way (or a need) to set the KAppTemplate
> package as a requirement for KDevelop ? This would result in the following
> advantages/disadvantages:
>
> Advantages
>
>    - Move the KDevelop Qt plugins to the KAppTemplate project. This would
>    simplify the KDevelop packages. KAppTemplate would serve as a real provider
>    for all project templates
>    - KAppTemplate could contain a sample KDevelop/KDevPlatform plugin
>    - More people know about the different project templates in KDevelop.
>    KAppTemplate provides an application, but I don't know anybody that uses
>    this application
>
> Disadvantages
>
>    - Higher dependency of the KDevelop package. It also needs some
>    arrangement with the distro packager
>
>
> As a conclusion, this would really increase the effect of the project
> templates - but needs some work. I am willing to improve the the
> KDevelop/KAppTemplate project templates and move them to the KAppTemplate
> project.
>
>  Please let me know about your personal thoughts about this situation.
> Maybe it's just a bad idea, maybe something interesting. Also, if there are
> some other (smaller) things to do, as a starting point, please write an
> email or send a message via IRC to swaechter.
>
>  Bets regards,
> Simon Wächter
>
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>
>
Hi Simon,
First of all, thanks for the interest, it's really awesome to have somebody
willing to take care of these. The situation has clearly been quite stale
for some time and can use some care.

Personally, I wouldn't do the moving. So far, the reasoning we've had is
that we keep the indispensable templtes in KDevelop and then we can re-use
those from kapptemplate, which take a step closer to the KDE development.
KDevelop is not an IDE to do KDE stuff, so we don't need to assume the
developers will want it by default. Arguably, they should get these when
installing the kdelibs5-dev package (or similar).

Maybe the problem is just that people shouldn't be getting the templates
through the package manager but from some Internet service?

Aleix
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