Hi all,

writing to KWin and Plasma as I want more input.

Since 4.6 KWin has a JavaScript interface which has been developed as a GSoC 
project last 
year. Unfortunately we have not received any further development on the 
scripting area in 
KWin. The last commit on the scripting subdirectory has been my coding-style 
change back in 
January. Since the end of GSoC there has only been one commit by the student.

Half a year without any commits means the code is in bitrot state. Especially 
given that we 
don't have any documentation about how the whole system works and no 
documentation for 
the users about how to write scripts (including myself). There have been some 
blog posts 
about it, but the request to move the documentation to techbase and community 
have not 
been honoured.

Furthermore I have noticed while working with KWin core that some of the 
signals for 
interaction between core and scripting are emitted at the wrong place. E.g. 
window activated 
is emitted at a state where KWin might still decide to not activate the window. 
Also some 
parts use direct method invocation instead of signal'n'slot which violates the 
design I have in 
mind for KWin.

My conclusion so far is, that:
1. we are not able to maintain KWin scripting. It is likely that Arthur's 
refactoring project will 
break scripting without we even noticing.
2. we are not able to extend it. E.g. Wayland will not support scripting
3. it is not of any use for our users and nobody is using it (no bugreport so 
far)

I am very unsure on how to go ahead with this code. The most honest thing would 
to 
withdraw the feature again, but I don't want to do that as KDE gave a GSoC slot 
to it.

I would appreciate some input on how to proceed in such a situation. Especially 
the input 
from Plasma devs who have gone through similar situations (e.g. widget 
explorer) could help 
me a lot.

Cheers
Martin

Attachment: signature.asc
Description: This is a digitally signed message part.

_______________________________________________
Plasma-devel mailing list
Plasma-devel@kde.org
https://mail.kde.org/mailman/listinfo/plasma-devel

Reply via email to