[Debian-med-packaging] Bug#874837: [ball] Future Qt4 removal from Buster

[Lisandro Damián Nicanor Pérez Meyer]

Source: ball
Version: 1.4.3~beta1-3
Severity: wishlist
User: debian-qt-kde at lists.debian.org
Usertags: qt4-removal


Hi! As you might know we the Qt/KDE team are preparing to remove Qt4
as [announced] in:

[announced] <https://lists.debian.org/debian-devel-announce/2017/08/msg00006.html>

Currently Qt4 has been dead upstream and we are starting to have problems
maintaining it, like for example in the [OpenSSL 1.1 support] case.

[OpenSSL 1.1 support] <https://bugs.debian.org/cgi-bin/bugreport.cgi?bug=828522>

In order to make this move, all packages directly or indirectly depending on
the Qt4 libraries have to either get ported to Qt5 or eventually get
removed from the Debian repositories.

Therefore, please take the time and:
- contact your upstream (if existing) and ask about the state of a Qt5
port of your application
- if there are no activities regarding porting, investigate whether there are
suitable alternatives for your users
- if there is a Qt5 port that is not yet packaged, consider packaging it
- if both the Qt4 and the Qt5 versions already coexist in the Debian
archives, consider removing the Qt4 version

= Porting =

Some of us where involved in various Qt4 to Qt5 migrations [migration] and we
know for sure that porting stuff from Qt4 to Qt5 is much much easier and less
painful than it was from Qt3 to Qt4.

We also understand that there is still a lot of software still using Qt4.

Don't forget to take a look at the C++ API changes page [apichanges] whenever
you start porting your application.

[migration] http://pkg-kde.alioth.debian.org/packagingqtbasedstuff.html
[apichanges] http://doc.qt.io/qt-5/sourcebreaks.html

For any questions and issues, do not hesitate to contact the Debian Qt/KDE
team at debian-qt-kde at lists.debian.org

The removal is being tracked in <https://wiki.debian.org/Qt4Removal>

Lisandro,
on behalf of the Qt4 maintainers