[Pkg-kde-extras] Bug#874961: Bug#874961: kmymoney: not ready for Qt5

[Micha Lenk]

Hi Pino,

Am 09.09.2018 um 23:08 schrieb Pino Toscano:
> In data domenica 9 settembre 2018 15:11:52 CEST, Micha Lenk ha scritto:
>> This is a short heads up that I intend to remove support for Qt4 from
>> libgwenhywfar on September 13th 2018. This will be done by dropping the
>> binary packages libgwengui-qt4-0 and libgwengui-qt4-dev from the
>> archive. As a consequence this will cause kmymoney to fail to build from
>> source in unstable due to the build dependency libgwengui-qt4-dev
>> becoming unavailable.
> 
> Well, thanks for the uncooperative pressure.  This is not helpful,
> given the current state of kmymoney (see below).

Please apologize for emitting some "uncooperative pressure", but the
reasons for not uploading kmymoney 5.0 to unstable were not visible
either. From what is visible in the Debian bug tracker, the package in
experimental looks like it is in a way better shape than the package in
unstable. For that reason I couldn't even imagine there are more issues
in kmymoney 5.0.1 than there are in 4.8.1. Also the upstream release
announcement for 5.0.0 sounds as if the 5.0 series is ready for prime
time now:

    ... this version has actually been used in production by
    many of the developers, so it has actually had a significant
    amount of testing.

I don't get what you're waiting for not uploading it to unstable. This
will not immediately make the package available to Debian stable users.
And users that deliberately install unstable/testing should know what
they are doing anyways, and hopefully file bugs for stuff that is
broken. Isn't this the release model that Debian is trying to drive?

> kmymoney 5.0.0 was the first version ported to Qt5/KF5, and was released
> after more than 2 years of upstream work, which included the actual
> Qt4->Qt5 and kdelibs4->KF5 switch. From my inspection of the release,
> there were bugs and regressions, and even the bugfix release 5.0.1 does
> not fix all of them.
> Sadly, the status of the development upstream is:
> - lots of refactoring commits, much less about fixing actual issues
> - stable branches sometimes get fixes, but then upstream almost does
>   not get to stabilize them into new bugfix releases (e.g. one year
>   between 4.8.0 and 4.8.1)
> 
> Upstream should release a 5.0.2 at the end of this month. My plan is to
> upload that to experimental, and see what's the feedback from users
> (not only Debian ones).
> 
> Considering that kmymoney is not a game nor a text editor, but an
> application that deals with personal money (and performs also online
> financial transactions), I was not confortable in uploading a new 5.0.0
> (or even 5.0.1) to unstable "just because". Of course YMMV on this.
> 
> Bottom line: if you make the rest of the work in unstable, even for
> the kdelibs4 version, harder for us (or me, at least), that would be
> very uncooperative, and really uncalled for.

Well, this is all news to me. So, this changes the picture for me quite
a lot. So, I think I will not do the announced removal of Qt 4 support
in libgwenhywfar, unless the Debian release managers poke me to do so.

I acknowledge, in the end the package maintainer who engages in some
upstream relation is in a much better position to decide whether a
certain upstream release is ready for unstable or not.

> And yes, I already know that kmymoney will be autoremoved from testing
> on 13th: this is thanks to another uncooperative DD, who likes to poke
> his nose into packages who he has no idea about.

Coordinating a Debian release is a pretty long term process and
sometimes means taking tough decisions. Yet, the release management team
can only digest the information that is available. If you don't speak
up, they can't help your case.

Regards,
Micha