best language to write a konqueror plugin?

[David Faure]

On Thursday 15 July 2010, Armel Asselin wrote:
> Hi,
> 
> I would like to write a plugin to konqueror, to add (dynamic) contextual
> menus in its file manager part.
> 
> My problem is that C++ ABI tend to change from a linux to another,
> depending on the gcc used to build the OS.

I don't think this is correct, the C++ ABI is standard nowadays.

What might create trouble, though, is developing on a recent system and then 
giving the .so to people with older version of the libraries (any library used 
by the .so, really), where symbols would not be found.

> the plugin is for users who do not have necessarily plenty of development
> packages installed, so delivering C++ code which in turn would have to be
> built against konqueror plugin .h/.a seems a no-no [their admin probably
> won't accept installing packages just for our tool]
> 
> what is the solution to use in that case? is there a language binding such
> as Python or Perl which would let me do that job but with no binary
> compatibility problems? or maybe a up-to-date C binding? (seen QtC but
> seems outdated)

You probably want to ask on the kde bindings mailing-list, I don't know much 
about the state of our bindings. I think they have some generic loader for 
scripted plugins, but it might be for kparts only, not for specific plugins 
like KonqPopupMenuPlugin... well, I don't exactly know.

> or am i wrong and is there some strategic build of g++ used for most
> libqt's making a binary release reasonable?

Personally, I would give that a try. As long as your users have a version of 
Qt and kdelibs that is not older than yours, I don't see why it wouldn't work 
(I could be wrong, though). Of course you'll need a 32 bit and a 64 bit build.

-- 
David Faure, faure at kde.org, http://www.davidfaure.fr
Sponsored by Nokia to work on KDE, incl. Konqueror (http://www.konqueror.org).