PIM Sprint (The bits relevant to Plasma)

[John Layt]

On 18 November 2013 20:53, David Edmundson <david at davidedmundson.co.uk> wrote:
> To plasma-devel, CC'ing KDE PIM.

A few small clarifications, for more details see some initial
documentation at http://community.kde.org/Frameworks/Epics/kdepimlibs

> Preparing for Plasma 2:
>
>  - KDE PIM is currently used in kde-workspace for:
>     - an Akonadi dataengine
>     - showing events in the calendar (which was C++ without the
> dataengine in Plasma 1)
>     - various runners

There are 3 data engines and 2 runners which link to kdepimlibs.  The
Akonadi and RSS data engines are not used anywhere in the kde repos,
only the Calendar Engine is used in the calendar plasmoid.  The 2
runners are for contacts and events and link directly to kdepimlibs
and not via the data engines.  Full details are on the wiki.

There was some discussion that KPeople would remove the need for the
contacts runner to link to kdepimlibs?

>  - Tentative timeline for PIM:
>    - Plan is to start porting to Qt5/Frameworks  /after/ frameworks is
> done (so we may have a kdepimlibs-transitional in ~ 6months)

We're tentatively aiming to fork a frameworks branch in about 3 months
once the KF5 split is done, then perhaps 3 months of basic Qt5/KF5
porting and re-arranging before we split, then each library will be
released as it is ready over the following 6 months.  We're reluctant
to throw too many resources at it too soon that are needed to bug fix
KDEPIM 4.

>    - Annoyingly (from a Plasma perspective) kcalcore is going to be
> one of the hardest (and therefore slowest) to port as it uses
> KDateTime a lot. (probably nearer to 12 months)

We'll be trying to prioritise the libraries used by Plasma, and it
could be ready sooner, but we're very reluctant to give a time frame
before anyone's had a look at it.  The other main library used is
KHolidays which will be available very quickly.

>  - One discussion was to have a first run wizard which shows web
> accounts to raise awareness of PIM/super cool IM clients, over web
> applications (gmail + FB etc)
>   "[having a first run wizard] is Plasma's call, but if there is one,
> this is what we want to add" - John Layt.

The idea being that if the user didn't configure any calendars on
first run, then we would know to disable events and so never wake
Akonadi up.  The alternative is that we ship with events turned off by
default, which is what most distros do now.

Cheers!

John.