building kde4-baseapps (10.6.8)

[Ian Wadham]

On 03/03/2014, at 2:31 AM, René J.V. Bertin wrote:
> BTW, how complete is support for KDE4 on OS X? Is it more a proof of concept,

Support from the KDE group for KDE 4 on OS X?  Almost non-existent:
I think very few of them have Macs … :-)  If you can nail down a problem
in a KDE library or build, you can get support for it on the KDE mailing
lists, but that requires a lot of preparatory work (by you) on the Mac.

KDE *libraries* are intended to be portable across OS X and Windows
and to a large extent they are.  That is how I can work as a KDE Games
developer on a MacBook ...

A lot of the portability of the libraries stems from the underlying Qt 4
library (see 'port info qt4-mac'), which is a very good fit on OS X and
gives all the KDE apps an Apple look and feel (i.e. it uses OS X native
windows and widgets).

> or can one run a more or less complete KDE desktop alongside Cocoa

I think that is pretty much out of the question, unless you run a virtual
machine.  I am not sure where Linux is up to with dual-booting on Mac.
When I last looked, about two years ago, it was possible with Windows
(using Apple's Boot Camp) but not with Linux.

> and use apps like the Calligra suite function?

Running simple KDE apps (i.e. apps that do not depend too much on KDE
desktop background processes, daemons, etc.) is fine, because of library
portability (see above).

KDE apps with many inter-communicating parts are apt to give problems
at execution time on OS X, even if you can compile and build them.  I get
no joy with Dolphin, for example (but am fairly happy with OS X Finder
anyway).  Likewise with KMail and the KDE PIM (personal information
manager) suite.  I manage reasonably well with Apple Mail, but I miss KMail …

So I do not fancy your chances with the Calligra suite … but maybe
someone else has tried it on MacPorts?

If all else fails, I can recommend LibreOffice, which is inter-operable
with MS Office (they can use each others' documents, slide shows
and spreadsheets).  I have been using LibreOffice (and Open Office
before it) for many years --- on Windows, KDE/Linux and now OS X.

Hope this helps,
Cheers, Ian W.