Seeking Qt port maintainer or Qt removal

[Christopher Seawood]

So, the Qt port (as in TrollTech's Qt, not QuickTime) of Mozilla has
been busted since before moz0.9.9 was release (6+ months ago). A quick
search through bugzilla shows that there are at least 2 patches that
should get Qt compiling again (but no guarantees of correctness). As
we've gone through periods before when the port has been busted for
months at a time, I'm looking for someone to step up and maintain the Qt
port. Otherwise, I'm recommending that we remove it. I'd like to avoid
going through the 20 months of adding stub functions for global API
changes that we went through with Motif before we finally decided to
remove it from the tree.

- cls

[Roland Mainz]

Post by Christopher Seawood
So, the Qt port (as in TrollTech's Qt, not QuickTime) of Mozilla has
been busted since before moz0.9.9 was release (6+ months ago). A quick
search through bugzilla shows that there are at least 2 patches that
should get Qt compiling again (but no guarantees of correctness). As
we've gone through periods before when the port has been busted for
months at a time, I'm looking for someone to step up and maintain the Qt
port. Otherwise, I'm recommending that we remove it. I'd like to avoid
going through the 20 months of adding stub functions for global API
changes that we went through with Motif before we finally decided to
remove it from the tree.

There aren't much changes required to get the Qt port working again,
there are only two major changes which are easy to fix (if someone has
Qt installed).
Is there a BugZilla-bug like "Seeking new owner for the Qt-port" yet ?

----

Bye,
Roland

[Christopher Seawood]

Post by Roland Mainz
There aren't much changes required to get the Qt port working again,
there are only two major changes which are easy to fix (if someone has
Qt installed).

Compiling != working port. I'm looking beyond just getting the Qt port
compiling again. I'm looking for someone to "own" this port; to be the
"go to" person, so to speak. Qt bugs have had a tendency to bounce off
of either Browser-General and/or Build Config and then disappear into
some other component where they rot because the Qt port isn't a priority
for those component owners. So obviously, there should be someone for
whom the Qt port *is* a priority otherwise I'm not seeing the point of
having the code in the tree. We need to get better at purging code from
the tree that regularly breaks every few months due to neglect and isn't
discovered until a significant time period after the bustage occurred.

Ideally, the maintainer would be someone that builds & tests the Qt port
regularly. They should make sure that the port actually implemented a
full set of features, not just stubs, that would make the port a
reasonable alternative to the other toolkit ports (gtk, gtk2 & xlib).
If the Qt port doesn't implement a comparable set of features that the
other ports do, then what's the point of keeping it around?

Post by Roland Mainz
Is there a BugZilla-bug like "Seeking new owner for the Qt-port" yet ?

Nope. As we do not have any toolkit specific components, I don't see
the point in filing a bug about this issue. Well, short of one to
remove the code.

- cls

[morbit _at_ cdn.gs]

Post by Christopher Seawood

Post by Roland Mainz
There aren't much changes required to get the Qt port working again,
there are only two major changes which are easy to fix (if someone has
Qt installed).

Compiling != working port. I'm looking beyond just getting the Qt port
compiling again. I'm looking for someone to "own" this port; to be the
"go to" person, so to speak. Qt bugs have had a tendency to bounce off
of either Browser-General and/or Build Config and then disappear into
some other component where they rot because the Qt port isn't a priority
for those component owners. So obviously, there should be someone for
whom the Qt port *is* a priority otherwise I'm not seeing the point of
having the code in the tree. We need to get better at purging code from
the tree that regularly breaks every few months due to neglect and isn't
discovered until a significant time period after the bustage occurred.
Ideally, the maintainer would be someone that builds & tests the Qt port
regularly. They should make sure that the port actually implemented a
full set of features, not just stubs, that would make the port a
reasonable alternative to the other toolkit ports (gtk, gtk2 & xlib). If
the Qt port doesn't implement a comparable set of features that the
other ports do, then what's the point of keeping it around?

Post by Roland Mainz
Is there a BugZilla-bug like "Seeking new owner for the Qt-port" yet ?

Nope. As we do not have any toolkit specific components, I don't see
the point in filing a bug about this issue. Well, short of one to
remove the code.
- cls

there are interested parties in n.p.m.qt, whether anyone wants to
maintain I don't know, I'd be happy to be able to build it at least once
--
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[Esben Mose Hansen]

Post by morbit _at_ cdn.gs
there are interested parties in n.p.m.qt, whether anyone wants to
maintain I don't know, I'd be happy to be able to build it at least once

If I can get it to compile, I'll probably be interested in maintaining
it. I don't know zip about QT, but if that's what it takes, I'll learn.
But somebody knowledgable about QT would be preferred, of course.

But before I commit myself, I want it to compile so I can see how bad it
is...

regards, Esben

[Akkana]

Post by Esben Mose Hansen
If I can get it to compile, I'll probably be interested in maintaining
it. I don't know zip about QT, but if that's what it takes, I'll learn.
But somebody knowledgable about QT would be preferred, of course.
But before I commit myself, I want it to compile so I can see how bad it
is...

If you have problems getting it back to a state where it compiles and
runs, I might be able to help with that. (I'm not interested in owning
the qt port, though.)

...Akkana

[Benoit Mortier]

Post by Akkana

Post by Esben Mose Hansen
If I can get it to compile, I'll probably be interested in maintaining
it. I don't know zip about QT, but if that's what it takes, I'll learn.
But somebody knowledgable about QT would be preferred, of course.
But before I commit myself, I want it to compile so I can see how bad it
is...

If you have problems getting it back to a state where it compiles and
runs, I might be able to help with that. (I'm not interested in owning
the qt port, though.)

i'am know little on qt but i can learn and beta-test it

the idea of a k-zilla is good for me...

[Esben Mose Hansen]

Post by Akkana

Post by Esben Mose Hansen
If I can get it to compile, I'll probably be interested in maintaining
it. I don't know zip about QT, but if that's what it takes, I'll learn.
But somebody knowledgable about QT would be preferred, of course.
But before I commit myself, I want it to compile so I can see how bad it
is...

If you have problems getting it back to a state where it compiles and
runs, I might be able to help with that. (I'm not interested in owning
the qt port, though.)
...Akkana

Thanks. A "stand-by expert" would be really great :-)

Is your e-mail address valid and read? Or do you read the qt newsgroup
regularly (the flow currently is quite small --- a couple of posts a day
max)

[Nicolas REIMEN]

I would be very intersted to have a working Mozilla under Qt again and
so am willing to help as much as I can. For the time being, I do not
have much time so the most I can do is test. I mostly work on Windows
and so could do the testing for that environment. Just tell me how I can
get to compile the beast on Windows and how you want the feed-back
on bugs.

N. Reimen.

Post by Esben Mose Hansen

Post by morbit _at_ cdn.gs
there are interested parties in n.p.m.qt, whether anyone wants to
maintain I don't know, I'd be happy to be able to build it at least once

If I can get it to compile, I'll probably be interested in maintaining
it. I don't know zip about QT, but if that's what it takes, I'll learn.
But somebody knowledgable about QT would be preferred, of course.
But before I commit myself, I want it to compile so I can see how bad it
is...
regards, Esben

[Jaco Greeff]

Post by Christopher Seawood

Post by Roland Mainz
There aren't much changes required to get the Qt port working again,
there are only two major changes which are easy to fix (if someone has
Qt installed).

What are these two major changes that should be implemented? I'll be
willing to give this a go. I think there are people on at least this
list who will be willing to participate as well - provided we have some
guidance to get our heads around this beast.

Post by Christopher Seawood
Compiling != working port. I'm looking beyond just getting the Qt
port compiling again. I'm looking for someone to "own" this port; to
be the "go to" person, so to speak.

I'll be willing to play the role, provided I can get some help just
getting the thging into a usable state again - this seems to be the
biggest stumbling block, not providinbg the actual time. In my eyes this
is one thing that should not be scrapped.

Greetings,
Jaco

[Jaco Greeff]

Answering my own question...

Post by Jaco Greeff

Post by Roland Mainz
There aren't much changes required to get the Qt port working again,
there are only two major changes which are easy to fix (if someone has
Qt installed).

What are these two major changes that should be implemented?

1. Take bero's original patch for 1.0rc2 and fix it up to allow for the
qt option to work again.

2. Make sure the Qt 3 patch still applies on top of the first patch, to
allow for Qt 3 compatibility.

Hopefully that will result in a compilable version - I see that somebody
is already looking at this. Any real progress? I'm afraid I'll only be
able to devote some time starting tonight. I just don't want to
duplicate any effort already going into this.

Greetings,
Jaco

[Esben Mose Hansen]

Post by Jaco Greeff
Answering my own question...

Post by Jaco Greeff

Post by Roland Mainz
There aren't much changes required to get the Qt port working again,
there are only two major changes which are easy to fix (if someone has
Qt installed).

What are these two major changes that should be implemented?

1. Take bero's original patch for 1.0rc2 and fix it up to allow for the
qt option to work again.

It seems to be mainly new members in the printing area that hos been
added to the GTK/X interfaces that are missing in the QT. Members such
as getPaperSizeInTwiips() and so on. They seem pretty straightforward to
implement... I can post a pacth on my (rough) implementations so far.

This weekend I will download a qtlib.a and see if it can compile. Then
on to QT3.

If it helps any, perhaps we can drop support of qt and only keep qt3?
Would that bother a lot of people?

regards, Esben

P.S: Folowup to mozilla.qt...

[Jaco Greeff]

Post by Esben Mose Hansen
It seems to be mainly new members in the printing area that hos been
added to the GTK/X interfaces that are missing in the QT. Members such
as getPaperSizeInTwiips() and so on. They seem pretty straightforward to
implement... I can post a pacth on my (rough) implementations so far.

Excellent, then I don't have to re-do everything ;) Glad to see more
than one of us are willing to tackle this thing.

Post by Esben Mose Hansen
If it helps any, perhaps we can drop support of qt and only keep qt3?
Would that bother a lot of people?

In me eyes, this is a yes. All current distros are KDE 3-based and
Mozilla Qt is not in wide circulation at presnt.

Greetings,
Jaco