Just a teaser:

KDE software tends to require mysql as the database engine (either a hard requirement like Amarok, or recommended backend like in Akonadi) so things like these genuinely worry me:

Disappearing test cases or did another part of MySQL just become closed source?

Thoughts? MariaDB? PostgreSQL? …

p.s. I don’t have influence on amarok nor akonadi, just want to see what the people think

Dolphin got the ability to send the events when the user opens a directory to the activity manager. It is quite a small patch that I decided to share in order to demonstrate how easy it is to use KActivities API.

Simple example

Find the widget that displays your document (in this case, a folder). Declare one KActivities::ResourceInstance object inside it

KActivities::ResourceInstance *
        m_activityResourceInstance;

When you create the container, just create a new ResourceInstance and pass the window id (of the top-level window that your container resides in) and the url you just opened:

DolphinViewContainer::DolphinViewContainer
    (const KUrl& url, QWidget* parent)
{
    :::

    #ifdef KActivities_FOUND
    m_activityResourceInstance
        = new KActivities::ResourceInstance(
            window()->winId(), url
        );
    m_activityResourceInstance->setParent(this);
    #endif

    :::
}

This is it if you have a SDI (single-document interface) - interface where one main window can contain only one document (okular, kwrite etc.)

MDI

If you have a possibility to have multiple documents inside one window (dolphin, konqueror, kate etc.), you’ll need to do some additional things:

If your component lost the user’s focus (switched to another document), call:

m_activityResourceInstance->notifyFocusedOut()

When it receives the focus, call:

m_activityResourceInstance->notifyFocusedIn()

And when the url of the document that is shown changes (user opens another file, navigates to another web page), just call:

m_activityResourceInstance->setUri(newUrl);

This is all.

Why?

This info is used for the share-like-connect applet and to rank the locations users visit. This can be, in turn, used to sort applications, documents etc. in krunner based on the ranking; to show most recent documents for pinned applications in the task bar etc.

Privacy

Although every system tracks the user’s behaviour in some way, it might not be something the user desires. This will be configurable - see this for more info

For the whole ResourceInstance API, see: api.kde.org/KActivities::ResourceInstance

I’ve just committed a helper script to KDE Activities that gets into all different build directories for the project you’re compiling, and runs the compilation. If all compiles successfully, it calls git commit.

I have decided to compile kactivities on a regular basis with GCC 4.7 (my default compiler), GCC 4.5 and Clang 3.1 to ensure no compiler specific things are being used, and no C++11 features that GCC 4.5 doesn’t support.

If anyone is interested, here it is:

#!/bin/bash

# The script finds build directories for the current
# src directory and builds them
#
# For example, for the source dir:
#   /some/path/kde/src/project/whatever
# It finds:
#   /some/path/kde/build*/project/whatever

current_dir=`pwd`

all_root_dir=`pwd | sed 's#/src/.*##'`
src_root_dir=$all_root_dir/src

echo "src:   $src_root_dir"

for build_root_dir in $all_root_dir/build*; do
    echo "building in $build_root_dir"

    cd $current_dir
    current_dir_log=`OBJ_REPLACEMENT=s#$src_root_dir#$build_root_dir# makeobj`
    if [ "$?" = "0" ]
    then
        echo "... success"
    else
        echo "... FAILED"
        echo $current_dir_log
        exit
    fi
done

git commit

Activities have some hidden features, some that can even be configured, but not from the UI. They also have a nice plugins system that is far from the user’s eyes.

I am planning to make a system settings module for it, but haven’t gotten to do it yet. The configuration in the plasma’s activity browser panel just doesn’t cut it anymore.

It would be quite nice if someone stepped up to implement at least some parts of it. Even starting and leading a discussion on the mailing list regarding the UI would be beneficial.

There are some similarities between kwin and kamd in this regard. Plugins could be shown like kwin effects are, in a list, but some of them provide features that should be shown in a more pleasant way.

These are the features that need to be covered OTOH:

• Creation and deletion of activities, and the other things currently available in the activity browser
• Configuring which applications should be tracked (record which documents they open) - globally and per-activity
• Private activities - setup, do-not-track option, extendable to include more features
• more…