On Tue, Nov 02, 2010 at 11:13:59AM +0100, Chani Armitage wrote:
> kde4->5 would be more like kde2->3... you'd do a search-and-replace to
> handle stuff that moved, compile, maybe catch one or two behaviour
> changes, and that'd be it. :)
> 
that's a bit naive.

during reorganizing kdelibs, a sh**load for garbage would be unearthed,
which would have to be rewritten or purged by the new quality standards.
this is not a fear, but something i know for a fact (basically, i come
to that conclusion every time i try to touch one of the "mature" classes
nobody touched in years).
the elimination of redundancy with qt would bring us a lot of classes
with slightly different semantics.
the "de-platformization" of many core libraries would bring many subtle
(and not so subtle) changes.
and while we'd be at it, we'd also do some other changes scheduled for
kde5.

so this would easily become the most disruptive change to existing
kdelibs functionality ever, with the highest technical demands to make
the exercise even remotely worth the fuss.

i'm all for it, but i'm not too optimistic that "kde" can - or even
wants to - pull that off.