KDElibs4/windows BoF

a kind of transcript collected by: Jaroslaw Staniek, 27 sep 2006

What? 
-KDElibs (some of the kdebase)
-KDEApps; what application would you like?
-- popular voting: Konqueror (by default only as a web browser replacement, 
    without complex web browsing capatibilities)
-- Kontact as Kolab client to get corporate users
-- KOffice, a great way for promoting it and open standards as a whole
- Definitely not the whole desktop (even if we're going to have infinite resources :)
-installer is another task, we need keep things simple as possible for the average 
   Joe Windows user; also make the development package easy to install and update
--NSIS used internally by jstaniek is not recommended
--the (free) Windows Installer XML (WiX) toolkit from MS creates .msi files
--no decision yet for picking an installer toolkit but it will be most probably 
   windows-only
-Problems related to multiple targets: msvc, gcc - incompatibilities in ABI
--Offer a bundle with two sets of libs (or three is borland's going to be supported)
--we cannot force developers to one compiler and development tools
--we cannot force users to only use msvc-based or gcc-based binaries on a given machine
--no problem with suffixing the binary names with "msvc" or "gcc" and put all 
  the files in the same dir
--jstaniek mentioned that for convenience he switched to from lib/ to bin/ directory 
  as a target for libraries
-what after success KDE apps on windows - first KVirus from evil contributor?
-(from Christian Ehrlicher) 
--how does Trolltech see the unofficial patches to compile qt4 with msvc? 
   What will happen with those patches when the authors get access 
   to a commercial Qt version?
--KDE libs are LGPL so it's possible to promote it also for users of commercial 
   Qt (wider developers audience)
-is anyone interested in using Borland compilers? Probably yes. However thirs 
   target adds complexity.
-current state: DBUS problems (compiles but does not run), fixing in progress, 
  cooperation with Thiago
-finally, we need some more attention in the public to get some more people 
  to work on kdelibs4/win; perhaps you can find someone near your workplace or so?
-contact on kde-windows@kde.org mailing list and #kde4-devel IRC channel, content 
  at wiki.kde.org, new kdelibs.com Wiki