Hi Compiz developers, as you might know KDE will transition to git somewhen next week. This gives some new possibilities for the Compiz community, too.
Let me first describe the current situation and the problems with it: Compiz and KDE releases are out of sync. We are currently more and more integrating features from the desktop shell into the window manager. In difference to other desktop shells (GNOME Shell, Unity) Plasma still allows to use a different window manager and has not removed any legacy code. This is a hughe advantage and although it does not look like other shells care about supporting different window managers I do not want to lose the possiblity to switch the window manager. Up to now Compiz has done a great job of supporting our additions, so that Compiz users get the same level of integration as KWin users. Nevertheless due to the fact that releases are out of sync Compiz users do not get new features when KDE has a release. This gets to a real problem when KWin changes the decoration API as that causes KDE4-Window-Decorator to crash (this is the most often reported bug against KWin). This has let to a stagnation in our decoration API as we don't dare to touch the code again. Nevertheless I plan to change the API in 4.7 and our most prominent decorations (Oxygen and Aurorae) will move to it. Now with the git transition there might be a solution for these kind of problems: Compiz's KDE Plasma integration is moved to KDE's infrastructure and could be released in sync with the rest of Plasma. This means you don't have to care about the release (done by KDE's release team). Additionally you get the advantages of the KDE community like the Krazy checks [1] and developers going through the code and fix common issues. Translation would be provided by KDE's translation infrastructure ensuring that the code is translated into all the languages KDE supports and providing a consistend translation. Concerning better support for changes in Plasma/KWin integration and decoration API, there is the chance that KWin developers will directly port changes to Compiz if it is in the same repository. Especially the decoration API is that small that we can add support to Compiz directly. Nevertheless there are a few things you should be aware of: * Everybody with commit rights to KDE would be allowed to commit to it. * You would need a KDE commit account to be able to commit to the repository (though KDE hands out commit rights rather easily and you are all proven members of the community) * You would probably need to go through a two weeks Review Process which requires that there are no reported Krazy issues. Last time I looked into the Compiz KDE integration part the code was not in a state to get through review directly (As you are also using C++ I can only recommend to run KRazy checks on your main repository, too. It should also find generic options and KDE specific checks can be disabled.). Depending on where the repo will me moved that step might be omitted. The last point gets me directly to where to move the code. There are several options: 1. Own repository either in extragear or as part of KDE SC. KDE SC would mean releases synced with rest of KDE. 2. Part of workspace repo. Same as option 1 with SC, but you get also access to the private libs of workspace. This means you could add support for KDE's activities, use Kephal for screen handling and could in general add more integration for Plasma. Disadvantage: KDE does not use submodules so the code needs to be imported, which means the code really has to move to KDE infrastructure. 3. Part of KWin. That is same as option 2, plus you could use KWin internal code. E.g. no need to duplicate decoration code any more, make use of KWin parts separated from core (e.g. Alt+Tab). This is probably the best integration you could get. Personally I would prefer option 3 from an integration point of view. My current plans are to modulize KWin which would allow to make use of more KWin features. If there is interest from your side for going such a step, I would contact KDE's sysadmins to evaluate a possible merge path. Cheers Martin Gräßlin KWin Maintainer P.S. We will probably have another Plasma developer sprint in Europe around April. It would be nice to have some Compiz developers around to discuss possible future integration and collaboration. [1]: http://quality.kde.org
signature.asc
Description: This is a digitally signed message part.
_______________________________________________ compiz mailing list compiz@lists.freedesktop.org http://lists.freedesktop.org/mailman/listinfo/compiz