I am currently blocked by the plasma startup script which has been completely rewritten in C++ (was previously made in Bash)

I am currently blocked by the plasma startup script which has been completely rewritten in C++ (was previously made in Bash)

Which component? Can you link the current expression and the patch?
We can then examine the C++ code and see what needs to be implemented/re-implemented in the patch for it.

Edit: guessing source is

• https://phabricator.kde.org/source/plasma-workspace/browse/master/startkde/startplasma.cpp

old patch is

• https://github.com/NixOS/nixpkgs/blob/master/pkgs/desktops/plasma-5/plasma-workspace/plasma-workspace.patch

Cc @ttuegel ^

It's in this patch pkgs/desktops/plasma-5/plasma-workspace/plasma-workspace.patch

And the startup scripts are in plasma-workspace-5.17.0/startkde:
startkde.cmake is now startplasma-x11.cpp
startplasma.cmake is now startplasma.cpp
startplasmacompositor.cmake is now startplasma-wayland.cpp and startplasma-waylandsession.cpp

I am currently blocked by the plasma startup script which has been completely rewritten in C++ (was previously made in Bash)

Although we "patch" the startup scripts, ours versions are essentially a rewrite. Over the years, almost every line of the original script has been replaced. Many, many things are broken in upstream's scripts in ways that are not obvious at first. If we want to patch the new C++ startup files, we will need to go through line by line in comparison with the shell scripts.

What a completely useless vanity rewrite. 😠

Unless you can find some new functionality (I looked at the source and I can't): I strongly recommend that, instead of patching upstream's scripts, we delete startplasma and friends in postInstall and replace them with our existing scripts.

Faster startup due to this rewrite was a headline feature of this release. Not that I’m struggling with the existing startup time, but it is something that I’ve seen users on, eg, Reddit speak about in a positive way.

I've actually noticed plasma's startuptime regress since using qt wrappers, not sure how that produces an overhead, but if you look at any of the screenshots of the vm tests it rarely draws the desktop upon completion. Not sure if a C++ startup script would assist in that regard.

@ttuegel, right it's essentially a rewrite. So the C++ files should probably be substituted with rewritten one's during the build, if that's the route chosen.

I'm with @ttuegel on this. If the only thing blocking is the start-up, then ideally we (I'm aware that I'm saying "we" without having done any actual work on this) simply release with the old script (assuming it works) and we can then sort out the cpp version later.

I've actually noticed plasma's startuptime regress since using qt wrappers, not sure how that produces an overhead, but if you look at any of the screenshots of the vm tests it rarely draws the desktop upon completion.

Right, any kind of wrappers make start-up very slow because the shell is quite slow. We could replace Bash with a more minimal shell.

(The truth is, it may not be possible to support Qt/KDE without an FHS chroot. 😦)

This pull request has been mentioned on NixOS Discourse. There might be relevant details there:

https://discourse.nixos.org/t/when-is-kde-updated/4882/4

FYI, 5.17.4 and frameworks 5.64 are out.

KDE frameworks 5.64 already got merged in #73304

@nyanloutre I had a chance to look at this today. I needed to rebase onto master (branch) to fix an unrelated broken build. I'm now getting an error building kwin:

In file included from /nix/store/2pfj5rfcifmwc0db5jkydmhdcgkg5s3f-qtbase-5.12.6-dev/include/QtCore/qobject.h:54,
                 from /nix/store/2pfj5rfcifmwc0db5jkydmhdcgkg5s3f-qtbase-5.12.6-dev/include/QtCore/qiodevice.h:45,
                 from /nix/store/2pfj5rfcifmwc0db5jkydmhdcgkg5s3f-qtbase-5.12.6-dev/include/QtCore/qtextstream.h:43,
                 from /nix/store/2pfj5rfcifmwc0db5jkydmhdcgkg5s3f-qtbase-5.12.6-dev/include/QtCore/qdebug.h:49,
                 from /nix/store/2pfj5rfcifmwc0db5jkydmhdcgkg5s3f-qtbase-5.12.6-dev/include/QtCore/qloggingcategory.h:44,
                 from /nix/store/2pfj5rfcifmwc0db5jkydmhdcgkg5s3f-qtbase-5.12.6-dev/include/QtCore/QLoggingCategory:1,
                 from /build/kwin-5.17.0/build/plugins/qpa/logging.h:6,
                 from /build/kwin-5.17.0/plugins/qpa/eglhelpers.cpp:24:
/nix/store/2pfj5rfcifmwc0db5jkydmhdcgkg5s3f-qtbase-5.12.6-dev/include/QtCore/qmetatype.h:59:2: error: #error qmetatype.h must be included before any header file that defines Bool
   59 | #error qmetatype.h must be included before any header file that defines Bool
      |  ^~~~~

Have you seen this before?

@ttuegel hello, I am not sure about this one. Do you have the same problem with the last version of plasma ? (5.17.5)

Do you have the same problem with the last version of plasma ? (5.17.5)

No, it seems to be fixed in kwin-5.17.5. Thanks!

Closing in favor of #79011. I have a newer version with patches for the startup process, but there are a few other unsolved issues.