Simpler to make KDE applications for Windows

KDE is a very popular Desktop Environment for UNIX/Linux. Windows users can already use Cygwin (Linux API emulation layer) to run Linux programs like KDE, but it is not possible to run KDE programs natively in Windows. This is about to change. The QT-KDE Wrapper's first priority was:

• Compiling and running existing KDE applications under win32 as native (without X11 and Cygwin) win32 apps without changing almost anything in the source code.

Their great efforts have resulted in a Windows version of the data management tool Kexi.

The QT-KDE Wrapper has reached it's milestone and is now renamed KDElibs/win32 project. Jaroslaw Staniek, head developer and coordinator for the project, submitted patches for 277 files into the mainstream

KDE CVS tree last week. The submissions were mainly headers and macros needed to compile KDE-Libs on Win32.

Work has not yet begun on porting networking APIs to Win32, so Konqueror running natively in Windows is still far ahead. Replacing the Windows desktop with KDE in Win32 is not a priority: Is there on win32 any other than "for fun" reason not to using existing excellent browser replacements like Mozilla, FireFox or Opera? asked developer Jaroslaw Staniek and point out that Technically, Konqueror is a shell for so many KDE technologies (e.g. KParts, KIOSlaves), so if you want to see any advantage, you need to also install more KDE components on your win32 desktop..

Porting all of KDE to Windows is not beneficial or desirable, but making the KDE libraries is. Jaroslaw Staniek explains The goal is to make it easier for developers to use KDElibs as theirs framework of choice, delivering far more powerful features than using plain Qt framework. And let's don't even compare it to obsolete Microsoft Foundation Class (MFC).

Read LinuxReviews the full interview with Jaroslaw Staniek for more information.

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