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List:       kde-core-devel
Subject:    Re: Qt-only KDE applications
From:       Rik Hemsley <rik () kde ! org>
Date:       2002-01-22 23:55:09
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#if ian geiser

> What are the exact issues involved here?  dopening afaik is a little more
> complicated on Win32 and MacOSX, and there are the obvious X dependancies.
> 
> I have to admit I am not very educated on what in deep in KDE libs that is
> not portable to Win32 so someone else would have to speak on that behalf.

The major issues I've found related to porting are UNIX sockets and
shared libraries.

UNIX sockets are used for DCOP. Hopefully these work the same on MacOS
X, but for Windows we could either steal some cygwin code or use TCP
sockets. DCOP communicates libICE, which can use TCP sockets instead if
you ask it to. This raises more complex security issues than those
involved with UNIX sockets, but I'm sure they can be worked out.

MacOS X and Windows have shared libraries. I seem to remember hearing
something about ltdl working on MacOS X, which would help us a lot. As
for Windows, well, I'm no Windows expert. Perhaps someone else knows
whether it would be possible to do some dlopen-style stuff with the
native API.

I had a look through all the files in kdecore and made a text file
describing the portability of each. You can read that here:
http://www.geoid.clara.net/rik/arch/kdecore-portability

The other Big Thing is kio. I haven't had enough exposure to the Windows
API to be able to say how much effort would be needed for porting there.

kdeui is pretty much platform-independent, as are most apps.

aRts could probably use DirectSound on Windows. No idea what MacOS X has
available in that area. MCOP uses UNIX sockets, so perhaps a
compatibility layer for MCOP and DCOP, using the code from cygwin, is a
good idea.

As for X dependencies, well, these are mostly for IPC (the old KIPC,
which may disappear soon anyway), MITSHM (for pixmaps, non-essential)
and interaction with kwin+kicker (NET_WM stuff). I don't have the
knowledge of non-X11 platforms to say how these could be handled.

Rik

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