From kde-devel Thu Feb 05 12:14:12 2015 From: Aleix Pol Date: Thu, 05 Feb 2015 12:14:12 +0000 To: kde-devel Subject: Re: KDE backward compatibility issue Message-Id: X-MARC-Message: https://marc.info/?l=kde-devel&m=142313849225059 On Fri, Jan 30, 2015 at 11:41 AM, Vasily Khoruzhick wrote: > Hi, > > I'd like to rise KDE backward compatibility issue once again. > > I've read [1] and [2] and as far as I understand, dropping xembed > support was more political decision than technical difficulty. Please > kindly understand that breaking applications for users is a no-go. > I'd like to remind a situation when KDE was broken by a change in > kernel API (IIRC it happened several times). But since kernel policy > is "we never break userspace", these changes were reverted. > > As a software developer and a KDE user I'd like to see similar > approach in KDE. Nowadays KDE is a software platform, not only a DE, > it provides some APIs to other applications. So KDE's situation is > somewhat similar to kernel's - you should not break backward > compatibility for older applications. > > There're some proprietary applications using xembed tray and Qt5 < > 5.4, for example - dropbox and viber. There's no way to fix them. As > for GTK apps - it's required to add libappindicator support to the > application, and it's not what app devs are willing to do (correct me > if I'm wrong). So proposed workaround requires some work for app devs. > And I suspect that they don't understand why THEY need to fix the > thing YOU broke. > > Looking at all changes happened to KDE for several past years I've an > impression that some KDE devs suffer from NIH syndrom. Broken system > tray (and using instead specification which wasn't adopted by all > other DEs), nepomuk -> baloo transition, no KDE PIM (once again... I > remember times when I lost all local mail archive during transition > from kmail 1 to kmail 2), missing support for autostarting scripts, > one more rework of solid (it isn't dropped yet?) - battery indicator > always shows that battery is charging... Etc, etc. > > I understand that some of these issues we'll be addressed within > several KDE releases, but it is somewhat like 1 year. Guys, do you > undestand that you propose to users non-complete and somewhat broken > software for at least one year? > > We (KDE users) have already seen issues like that back in KDE 4.0-4.1 times. > > Guys, could anyone tell me what prevents you from making transition to > KDE 5 smoother? What's the reason of dropping legacy support? What's > the reason of breaking non-KDE applications? > > [1] http://blog.martin-graesslin.com/blog/2014/03/system-tray-in-plasma-next/ > [2] http://blog.martin-graesslin.com/blog/2014/06/where-are-my-systray-icons/ > >>> Visit http://mail.kde.org/mailman/listinfo/kde-devel#unsub to unsubscribe << Do you have sni-qt installed? It reduced the problem for me. Aleix >> Visit http://mail.kde.org/mailman/listinfo/kde-devel#unsub to unsubscribe <<