Safety of upgrading KDE while running KDE?

[Ross Boylan <ross@biostat.ucsf.edu>]

Is it safe to upgrade KDE, especially core components like kdelibs,
while one is running KDE?  I've been erring on the side of caution,
but things have been changing a lot in testing recently, and it's a
bit of a hassle to shut everything down and start up again.

Anyone know under what conditions one should shut down KDE before an
upgrade?

Similarly, what about changes at the xorg level?  (I suppose I could
add lots of other things as well: hal, dbus, libc...)  I know Debian
generally doesn't require rebooting, but do the same "just do it"
assurances apply to running programs or sessions?

I had one particularly bad experience in which gnumeric blanked out a
file as a result of an upgrade while it was running.  So I tend to
shutdown GNOME applications before upgrades that might affect them.
And firefox routinely warns you to shutdown firefox after an upgrade.

Thanks.
Ross Boylan