KDE plans for the squeeze cycle

[David Palacio]

> My thoughts... this is just a draft, add your thoughts/extra information or
> if you just agree, and we'll try to get a final mail.
> I would be nice if we hear from modax before sending anything too (he is in
> vac).
>
> On Sun, Aug 16, 2009 at 02:41:27PM +0200, Marc Brockschmidt wrote:
> > Heya,
> >
> > As announced on dda [RT1], we want to get an impression when releasing
> > Squeeze is feasible. We have proposed a (quite ambitious) freeze in
> > December 2009, and some developers have noted that their planned changes
> > wouldn't be possible in this time frame. So, to find out when releasing
> > would work for most people, it would be great if you could answer the
> > following questions:
>
> I will answer your including also Qt 4 plans, that as you know is a quite
> important part for KDE 4 :)
> There is also a bunch of widely used kde apps that do not belong to KDE
> core, but they are leaf apps.
>
> > * Which major upstream releases of KDE are expected in the next two
> >   years? Which of those are material for Debian stable, which might be a
> > bit flaky?
>
> We currently have KDE 4.3.0 in unstable and we will have at least a couple
> of point releases before this year ends.
>
> KDE 4.4 is expected about January 2010.
> KDE 4.5 is expected about July 2010.
>
> It is not a good idea to do more speculation about dates after this point
> because in KDE they are also testing new release management methods...
>
> About flaky releases, usually 0 point releases have some bugs and 1 point
> releases are highly preferred to ship in a Debian stable release.
>
>
> We currently have Qt 4.5.2 in the archive and if it even could get another
> point release, the development and expectations are on Qt 4.6.
> There is not public release schedule for Qt 4.6, but worse case scenario, I
> think there will be at least a pre-release by december. Qt 4.5 was released
> in March 2009, I really expect Qt 4.6 being release before Qt 4.5 is one
> year old.
>
> Whether KDE 4.4 will need Qt 4.6 or not, is still unknown, it depends a lot
> of Qt 4.6 release date.
>
> > * How much time do you usually need from a new upstream release of KDE
> >   to a stable Debian package in unstable?
>
> Major releases:
> We usually are able to have the packages ready by the day of the release
> since we always get the final tarballs between 5-7 days before the release.
> In almost all the major releases, we need to put some stuff throught NEW
> and sometimes this is faster, sometimes it is not so fast.
>
> > * How many "big" transitions will the upcoming changes cause? When should
> > those happen? Can we do something to make them easier?
>
> Nothing I can think of now, we already have done most of the complicated
> stuff when moving from kde 3 to kde 4.
>
> Something it would be very nice to do for Squeeze is killing more kde 3
> apps. Specially, some of the kde 3 apps that are not ported and have
> somehow a replacement in kde 4.  This is being doing slowly [0]. Anyway,
> with the current dates you are proposing, I am almost sure kdelibs(4c2a)
> from kde 3 will have to be kept for Squeeze (plus Qt 3, of course) and it
> will be hard because they are quite dead upstream...
> What could be removed is arts (and we would love to), but it needs some
> work on it.
>
>
> In summary:
> We would like a Squeeze release with KDE 4.4.0 at least (4.4.1 if possible)
> and Qt 4.6. For us december work quite *bad*, if you freeze  in december
> we'll have some kde 4.3.x and from january we'll be using 4.4, if the
> freeze last a few months (*), by July we will be using 4.6 and it will be
> quite hard to care about bugs in KDE 4.3.x, that will be from 2 releases
> ago....
>
> (*) I am sorry but it is not crazy thinking about this happening...
>
> [0] http://wiki.debian.org/kdelibs4c2aRemoval

I want to highlight that Qt 4.6 will deliver an important set of new features 
(animation API, state machine framework), and important updates (graphics 
view, webkit, qtscript) [0]. Leaving 4.6 outside of the next stable, would put 
Squeeze in an unsupported status of new Qt software for it's entire life span.

See [1] for an estimate of when we should expect a 4.6 release.

[0] http://qt.nokia.com/developer/qt-roadmap

[1] http://stackoverflow.com/questions/1190545/qt-4-6-release-
date/1190569#1190569