KDE Frameworks / Plasma Progressing On FreeBSD, Wayland Is W.I.P.

[phoronix]

Phoronix: KDE Frameworks / Plasma Progressing On FreeBSD, Wayland Is W.I.P.

KDE developer Adriaan de Groot has provided an update concerning the state of running the modern KDE software stack with Plasma 5 and KDE Applications atop FreeBSD...

http://www.phoronix.com/scan.php?page=news_item&px=KDE-Plasma-KF5-FreeBSD-2016

[geearf]

In simple terms why do KDEF & Plasma need to be ported to FreeBSD? systemd stuff maybe?

[Thaodan]

No.
Just read the article..
Bluez and Wayland stuff.
Where the progress is lagging behind.

[vurpo]

Seems like they are hard at work patching KDE5 under FreeBSD.

[geearf]

No.
Just read the article..
Bluez and Wayland stuff.
Where the progress is lagging behind.

Hmm, they didn't port the bluez stuff as it wouldn't work.
As for Wayland they depend on supporting it natively, which once they do why should they hack Plasma for it?

[starshipeleven]

In simple terms why do KDEF & Plasma need to be ported to FreeBSD? systemd stuff maybe?

I'm guessing most is packaging, making sure it compiles fine with clang, and getting things done like mainline FreeBSD likes. There are some differences between FBSD and Linux though (starting from the kernel), and the fact that KDE targets mainly linux means someone has to iron them out.
It does not seem to be anything major though (i.e. no hard systemd dependencies like say for GNOME). If you see on their site, KDE stuff has always landed timely in the unofficial ports repo (which is like a "beta") https://freebsd.kde.org/news.php#ite...sma585inarea51

[geearf]

I'm guessing most is packaging, making sure it compiles fine with clang, and getting things done like mainline FreeBSD likes. There are some differences between FBSD and Linux though (starting from the kernel), and the fact that KDE targets mainly linux means someone has to iron them out.
It does not seem to be anything major though (i.e. no hard systemd dependencies like say for GNOME). If you see on their site, KDE stuff has always landed timely in the unofficial ports repo (which is like a "beta") https://freebsd.kde.org/news.php#ite...sma585inarea51

That's a good point I didn't of, the timely release of FBSD ports!
The clang idea seems a good one as well.

As for the kernels, do the KDE software depending on the kernel features directly?

I guess I misunderstood the blog because of the word "ports" in it and assumed it needed code to be ported instead of the concept of FBSD ports.


Thank you!

[starshipeleven]

As for the kernels, do the KDE software depending on the kernel features directly?

Probably not much, but sound subsystem in BSDs is different, for example (not just lack of pulseaudio, they lack also ALSA and have something else entirely).

Also, they are't using Glibc (linux deskop's kernel-userspace interface), and have BSD libc instead. Ok that both are posix (kinda) and that it isn't Musl libc (aimed to make tiny binaries) but that's still a different libc so something will need to be adjusted.

Really, I don't know, but I think there are enough differences that makes sense the need for "porting". It's not hardcore like porting from windows, but it is still a port.