Kexi/Porting to Qt&KF 5

Note

Draft. Based on notes from the Calligra 2014 Sprint. Each step leads to compiling (running?) state.
Started by jstaniek (talk) 19:06, 7 July 2014 (CET).

The grand plan:

1. [75%, builds, example runs] Port Predicate↓ lib to Qt 5
2. [97%] Move koproperty↓ lib to a separate kproperty repo, make it Qt-only and port to Qt5
3. [30%] Move koreport↓ lib to a separate kreport repo, make it Qt-only and port to Qt 5
   1. Remove scripting or port scripting?
4. Port Kexi (without KexiDB/calligradb, reporting, KoReport) to Qt 5 and port Kexi to Predicate and the new koproperty/koreport
   1. Reimplement report scripting using a simple solution to keep backward compatibility with Kexi 2
   2. Remove then unused calligradb lib and parts of KexiDB lib
5. Improve Kexi stability after porting
6. -- Kexi 3.0 release here --
7. Make koreport lib dependent on Predicate and remove code/API that becomes redundant (e.g. KoReportData)
8. Add a new scripting module
9. Use the module in Kexi Reports too, keeping backward compatibility with Kexi 2 scripting (add unit tests before porting to be very sure that compatibility is kept)

Rules

• Kexi's port itself is kept with other Calligra apps in the framework branch. During this time master branch is frozen to avoid merge conflicts. After a successful port of all planned code, we'll be back to development in master for unstable code and calligra-3.x for 3.x stable code.
• Use personal git scratch repos to avoid stress with buildbreaks and unnecessary BUG/review notifications
• Synchronize with (boud's?) branch of the Qt5 port. Boud's advice: My approach is more like, run each of montel's scripts, fix twhat's wrong, then go on. It's not something that's easy to paralellize.
• Don't run astyle on the code, it pollutes history, and astyle-kdelibs is a bit broken
• Based on "Porting notes" below, keep porting of one aspect in one commit to simplify reviews
• Use the reviewboard for reviews
• Use kde-dev-scripts.git porting scripts, in particular
  • convert-to-cmake-automoc.pl
• Libs that are separate repos should use the framework template (see Links) and be ported to this layout (for now it's just predicate, koproperty, koreport).

TODO...

Notes and Status

• TODO: publish detailed checklist (in a spreadsheet?)

Dependencies

Please read all this section carefully before taking action.

• Qt 5. Get >=5.2 stable version from your distro, not forgetting about development packages (headers). If you feel you want it, build Qt 5, but it's usually not necessary extra work.
• CMake: version >=2.8.12+ and 3.x are both supported. Get it from your distro (recommended) or build it.
• KDE Frameworks 5 (KF5) are needed as build-time and run-time dependencies for Calligra, Kexi and our frameworks (KProperty, etc).
• Use the kdesrc-build tool to conveniently build KF5. Building by hand in an option if you accept extra work usually not needed for our development (see Frameworks/Building/Details).
• There is the Adjust the paths step. For Kexi development (and Calligra in general) it's good to re-use paths that we already use, see the [[Calligra/Building#Recommended_Setup|Recommended setup of the Calligra build instructions. This means that recommendation for the kdesrc-buildrc config file is:

 source-dir /home/YOU/kde/src
 build-dir /home/YOU/kde/build
 kdedir /home/YOU/kde/inst5

Note

If you used /home/YOU/kde/inst as a dir the Calligra 2.x and other kdelibs4-based software, do not mix it with the Calligra 3.x+ and other kf5-based software, otherwise you can experience crashes or other strange behaviour. Use /home/YOU/kde/inst5 for example.

• Speed up: before using the KF5 with kdesrc-build, edit the kf5-qt5-build-include file and comment these lines if you don't want to build the workspace, applications and KDEPIM. This way only include kf5-frameworks-build-include lefts.

include kf5-workspace-build-include include kf5-applications-build-include include kf5-kdepim-build-include

• In particular, the kdesrc-build will install extra CMake Modules: [1], which is needed to make our software able to find the KF5 components at build time.

Predicate

• Download/Build/Release info → Predicate.
• Our target version is 1.0.0.
• To avoid conflicts, Qt 4 version kept for reference, has version 0.0.0.
• Depends only on system libraries and Qt, so it's a tier 1 framework
• Windows and Mac-specific matters.
• Porting to Qt 5 started by Wojtek Kosowicz (Jan 2015)
• Porting to Qt 5/Mac OS X started by Wojtek Kosowicz too (Jan 2015)
• Directory structure reorganized according to recommendations --Jstaniek (talk) 20:59, 23 February 2015 (UTC)
• A temporary repo: git clone kde:clones/predicate/staniek/work predicate

Branches:

qt4 - old Qt4-based master moved there, always stable

master - official Qt 5 branch, all platforms, always stable

qt5-kosowicz - Wojtek's Qt 5/Linux To have it build on that branch please export qt5 install dir

export QTDIR=<path to your qt5 install dir, or qtbase build dir if using uninstalled>
export PATH=$QTDIR:$PATH

qt5mac-kosowicz - Wojtek's Qt 5/Mac OS X

kproperty

• Our target version is 1.0.0 and KProperty project in Playground/Libs category of KDE projects
• Depends on system libraries and Qt, plus minor deps on KF5WidgetsAddons/KF5GuiAddons for some editors; later we may move this dependency to a plugin (so the core would stay Qt-only)
• Official git repo: kproperty, master branch (use: git clone kde:kproperty)
• Directory structure reorganized according to recommendations --Jstaniek (talk) 20:59, 23 February 2015 (UTC)

kreport

• Our target version is 1.0.0 and KReport project in Playground/Libs category of KDE projects
• To avoid conflicts, Qt 4 version kept for reference, has version 0.0.0.
• Depends on system libraries, Qt, and KProperty (tier 1), so it's a tier 2 framework, some deps on KF5WidgetsAddons (may be moved to a plugin so the core would stay Qt-only)
• Official git repo: kreport, master branch (use: git clone kde:kreport)
• Directory structure reorganized according to recommendations --Jstaniek (talk) 20:59, 23 February 2015 (UTC)
• Deps from calligra libs (copied, renamed): KoRuler, KoUnit

Git surgery

(Jstaniek (talk) 09:54, 23 February 2015 (UTC)) Repos are prepared by history rewrites such as:

git filter-branch --prune-empty -f --tree-filter \
'(mkdir -p src;mv Predicate src/predicate;mv Drivers src/drivers) 2> /dev/null || true' -- HEAD

Links

• Calligra 3.0 Porting Plan
• Calligra 3.0 Porting Notes
• Kexi tasks at todo.kde.org (KDE Identity needed), public read-only view
• Predicate tasks at todo.kde.org (KDE Identity needed), public read-only view
• Framework repository template - use for creating new frameworks
  • real world examples: KDiagram (recommended because it's a Calligra project -- next-gen kdchart, kdgantt), KArchive (tier 1), KIO (tier 3), KImageFormats plugins
• http://www.proli.net/2014/06/21/porting-your-project-to-qt5kf5/
  • CMake porting script port-cmake.sh

Docs

• Frameworks
  • Policies
  • Porting Notes
  • Build instructions
  • KF5 API docs
• Porting to Qt 5
  • Qt 5 C++ API changes
  • Qt4to5 tool

Background

• Notes from the 2014 Sprint Meeting