The first development snapshot of KDE4 has been released

Today, KDE releases a first developer snapshot of the upcoming KDE4 release. This snapshot is meant as a reference for developers who want to play with parts of the new technology KDE4 will provide, those who want to start porting their applications to the new KDE4 platform and for those that want to start to develop applications based on KDE4. This snapshot is not for end users, there is no guarantee that it will be stable, the interfaces are subject to changes at any time. The changes that have gone into the development version this snapshot is based on have all happend under the hood, little is visible yet. Now it is up to application developers to use the new possibilities. While this snapshot will probably not be what kdelibs will finally look like, it should give a fair idea of what to expect.

Developers can start porting their applications using this snapshot and investigate the new exciting technology. Highlights of this snapshot include:

An initial port of kdelibs, kdebase and kdepimlibs to Qt 4, providing the developer with a wealth of new possibilities. This snapshot uses a preview of the upcoming Qt 4.2.
DBus will be the Inter-Process-Communication protocol used for KDE 4. This snapshot contains an initial implementation. With the use of DBus, KDE will feature improved interoperability with other applications on the Free Desktop. Porting applications to DBus is explained on the porting wiki page.
Phonon (documentation) is another central feature of KDE4 providing a unified multimedia backend that offers an easy way for application developers to add multimedia capabilities to their applications.

CMake (FAQ) is the new buildsystem used for KDE4.

Questions about KDE4 can be answered on various mailing lists such as kde-devel and kde-buildsystem, as well as on #kde4-devel on irc.kde.org. Documentation for getting up to speed with KDE4 development is available from a number of sources.

Work is continuing on other pillars of KDE4, such as our Plasma desktop, Solid hardware layer, Oxygen artwork theme and Decibel communication architecture.

KDE development has never before been as exciting as it is today, so start hacking today!

First Development Snapshot of KDE4: "Krash"