Porting KDE to other compilers and architectures: KDE Solaris

Speaker: Stefan Teleman

In this talk we will discuss relevant technical aspects of porting a complex and large scale software project like KDE to non-GNU architectures and compilers. The emphasis will be on Solaris and the Sun compilers, but we will touch on several other software engineering issues and aspects of software portability in general, with an emphasis on C and C++ portability in particular.

This talk will be loosely structured along the following path:

• In the beginning, there was the Desktop
• Solaris userland vs. Linux and BSD userland
• Solaris Desktop Environment [or lack thereof]: what went wrong ?
• Solaris Multimedia: Have you heard of it ?
• What really makes a Desktop Environment a Desktop Environment ?
• QT: UNIX GUI The Right Way!
• Rebuilding the GNU Universe on Solaris
• Why C is not really portable
• If C is not really portable, should C++ even bother ?
• The Sun Studio Compilers: We Do Things The Sun Way, Not The GNU Way!
• C gotchas
• C++ gotchas
• Generic Programming: a goal or a means ?
• Layered Abstractions: when does one stop ?
• Multi-threaded programming in C++: the Good, the Bad and the Ugly
• What KDE achieved
• What KDE Solaris achieved

Our talk is not intended to be very formal. Although the flow of this talk will follow the topics enumerated above, many of these topics are interrelated. We aim to illustrate the dependencies between these topics.

We would like to finish by having an open discussion with all the participants.

Stefan Teleman

Biographical information will be added soon.