I decided to stop windows development - at least for a while. This means there will be no binary packages from my side for 4.2.4 and 4.3.x but I hope Saro will do them.
The main problem I see is the missing communication between the hobby programmers (like me) and the developers who get paid for their work on KDE. When you take a look at the kde-windows mailing list you will see that there's not much activity. And I don't think there's nothing to discuss... :(
Another problem I've is that I could not fix bugs in kdelibs just because the dependencies are moving fast and since we have to take care for all system libs (png, xml, openssl, pcre, ...). Making sure that they're up-to-date can take a lot of time. And when I finally managed to compile a KDE program I hit compiler errors. This is all fixable but not when you've only a little amount of time for KDE development.
I'm also disappointed by the role of the firms involved in KDE/windows development. Two years ago they asked us what they can do for us. We told them that we need:
*a continuous build like the buildbot from Dirk Müller
* a proper dbus/windows implementation
* a server to place our binary packages
* a good packaging system for the end user
But in the end nothing happened so we did all by our own (whereas I played the buildbot). For a long time we did not hear anything from them (except Jaroslaw Staniek was paid by one of them and therefore no longer had time for KDE/windows development). The did an own KDEPim/windows package and used an own packaging instead our KDEWin-Installer. I even could not build kdepim with emerge because of compiler errors...
And now some weeks ago they decided to finally start to fix the dbus/windows problem - but instead using the sourceforge windbus project they simply decided to start their own project. I was very angry about this step because they did not even ask if they could use it. Now we've three dbus projects - official dbus, windbus and the new dbus/windows implementation...
We'll see how KDE/windows evolves and maybe I'll participate on the development again but for now I'll step over to Linux and see how to help KDE there.
