To the Ends of the Earth - Exploring the Limits of Portability

Despite their strong roots on Linux and other Free operating systems, both KDE and Gnome have long moved beyond their home bases and started to target and reach a wide variety of platforms. The Free Software library and tools stack has become much more portable and it is now possible to write applications using Qt or Gtk+ that run on may kinds of desktops and devices. Declarative UI technologies such as Qt Quick make it easier to target different form factors, further broadening the spectrum. While the tools and frameworks isolate the programmer from many details of these platforms and devices, a lot remains to be done if one wants to truly integrate and interoperate everywhere. This needs to be considered on an architectural, implementation and process level. This presentation will explore the challenges especially in architecture and process, where they are less obvious than at the implementation level, and relate the lessons learned from mistakes of the past.