I identify that distributing your widget is problematic and should be looked at for Plasma 6.

This is a bigger issue than it seems, because it's not up until you have downloaded the widget that you know you are unable to run it because of any of the following reasons:

• your system libraries are too old in comparison to the ones required by the widget
• your system libraries are too new in comparison to the ones required to the widget (a library may be deprecated for Arch yet adequate for Ubuntu 22.04, see the case of FancyTasks not running under Kubuntu because of the Highlight used for plasmoids was moved from PlasmaComponents to PlasmaExtras. The programmer was running Arch and most likely noticed that executed plasmashell in the CLI would show error messages about PlasmaComponents.Highlight being deprecated and to use PlasmaExtras.Highlight instead.

I could happily live with the first issue (for the most part) by programming my widget against some ancient version of KDE and calling it a day.

However, the second issue makes it impossible to reliably distribute any complex widget, as you have to pledge to a common denominator that is expected to shift as time passes. I also believe it contributes to give the feeling that Plasma is buggy, because you may download widgets that won't work the way the programmer intended. Keep in mind that plasmoids are usually a one man effort, so there is hardly a way we can expect said programmer to maintain more than one version of the code.

Perhaps identifying if the plasmoid will sprout any errors prior to downloading it (and showing a warning alongside the Install button) would help a lot. I originally intended to propose a more complex solution to the issue, but I think this is a reasonable minimum.

It is with a heavy heart that I write this proposal and immediately set it in the "Wishlist" priority. I hope it does not fall under "Wishful thinking".

On a side note, it's sad for me to see how short-lived were all my plasmoids because of libraries changing from a Plasma version to the next. You've got something that works and then the next day you update your system and it goes down the drain; alas.