Kompare and KDE4

Jeff Snyder jeff at caffeinated.me.uk
Sat Jul 29 01:48:39 CEST 2006


Hi Everyone,

And apologies for the late response, as Winfried correctly guessed, I've 
been on holiday for the past couple of weeks. As Jaison pointed out, 
I've also been inactive for most of this year for various reasons.

The 3-way kompare branch was originally created as a branch for the 
feature it is named after, but became an ongoing development branch that 
was used because it  allowed people (at the time just me) to work on it 
without the schedules and pressure associated with the kde release cycle.
The plan then was to port the branch to kde4 and replace the copy in 
trunk - and to this end I deleted the copy in kde4's branch (back when 
it was in one) so that the old trunk copy wouldn't be ported. But 
somehow it came back, and it's now had all the kde-wide porting scripts 
run on it.
As I remember it, the 3-way branch isn't too far from being compilable, 
I should be able to get it into a compilable state over the weekend at 
least. However, there's a few things to fix before it'd be usable, most 
of which didn't get fixed because the effort would be wasted on kde3 and 
need to be re-done after the kde4 port.

So ideally, I'd like to see the 3-way branch ported to kde4, because 
merging the 3-way branch back into trunk would be almost impossible 
given how much it's changed. I'm willing to put in manpower to do this, 
but it will need quite a lot. The main problem is (as Winfried 
mentioned) porting to the model/view classes---for the views, this is 
more like a rewrite (unless we use Qt3Support).

Lastly, this discussion should move to the kompare-devel list 
(kompare-devel at kde.org), i've cc'd it on this email.

Cheers,
Jeff

Adam Treat wrote:
> The thing to do, in my mind, is to continue the port of trunk to Qt4/KDE4.  If 
> (or when) the manpower becomes available to merge the compiling/working trunk 
> with the 3-way-diff branch, then great.  If not, then...
>
> Either way, we need something that compiles and half-way works before you can 
> continue on the 3-way-diff branch.  That's my thoughts...
>
> Adam
>
> On Wednesday 19 July 2006 5:33 pm, you wrote:
>   
>> Hi, Jason,
>>
>> Since it's already late now, I'll give you a quick answer now and a longer
>> one tomorrow.
>> You are right, Jeff is the maintainer. I started working on Kompare last
>> december, then stopped in March because of getting married and restarted
>> just 10 days ago.
>>
>> Jeff (and me) were (are) working on the 3-way-kompare branch. Trunk didn't
>> get any changes since I'm involved.
>>
>> The 3-way-kompare is in an unstable and not fully working condition because
>> of new features and refactoring. In January it compiled and runned ok
>> though. We then stopped the development to make a design for the port to
>> qt4/KDE4, I'll attach that document. Due to marriage and other distractions
>> I had no time to start implementing this until one week ago. Still the
>> 3-way branch is supposed to go into KDE4. Any help here is welcome. Port to
>> KDE4 is quite a lot of work, due to qt4's new model/view classes.
>>
>> I tried to contact Jeff during the last week, but no result yet, he might
>> be on holiday.
>>
>> Kompare is not an abandonded project, just lacking of manpower :-)
>>
>> regards, Winfried Dobbe
>>
>> On Wednesday 19 July 2006 01:39, you wrote:
>>     
>>> Hello all. I'm sending this out to all the people I know of that have
>>> worked on porting Kompare recently. Unfortunately, none of us have
>>> been working together.  :)  This is my attempt to at least get us all
>>> on the same page. (If I missed anyone in the address list please
>>> forward them this.)
>>>
>>> In short, here's the state of Kompare as I can determine:
>>>
>>>        -- /trunk/kdesdk/kompare --
>>>
>>> This does not currently compile, but it's not too far off, as it has
>>> been benefiting from trunk-wide porting efforts over the last 6 months
>>> or so. The CMakelists were a bit wonky for some reason but I've got
>>> that taken care of in my sandbox. There are lots of obvious porting
>>> needs before it will run (QPointArray, QFontComboBox, QVBox*, QHBox*)
>>> but nothing a little time won't fix.
>>>
>>>        -- /branches/work/kompare/3_way_kompare --
>>>
>>> Obviously a working branch for development of 3-way-compares. The last
>>> change is from January of this year, and it has none of the KDE4
>>> changes at all. It definately saw some development before it was
>>> abandoned as there is a fairly decent amount of new code in there. I
>>> have no idea what shape this branch was in when work was stopped. I
>>> have no idea if it was compilable or runnable in January; it will
>>> certainly not compile now.
>>>
>>> I'd be interested in knowing just what the state of the 3way code was.
>>> If it was running and working and ready to release then obviously we
>>> need to merge it back into trunk and start some serious work to catch
>>> back up. If it wasn't running at the time then we are stuck with not
>>> one but two broken branches.
>>>
>>> I'm very willing to work on Kompare...but its current state scares me.
>>> I'm stopping all my work until I find out a little more about what's
>>> going on. (Probably should've done that first, yes? :) I'll be honest:
>>> I was under the impression that Kompare was an abandoned project. One
>>> thing is for certain: if the 3way diff branch is not in a completed
>>> state then I do not wish to work on (existing KDE4 porting + finishing
>>> 3-way-diff feature + porting 3-way-diff feature). That's more time
>>> than I have available.
>>>
>>> Jeff, I am presently under the impression that you are the current
>>> Kompare maintainer, so everything is in your control. No pressure. :)
>>> What's the Master Plan for Kompare? Inquiring minds want to know.  ;P
>>>       



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