KDE plans for the squeeze cycle

Fri Aug 21 18:39:07 UTC 2009

Hello,

On sekmadienis 16 Rugpjūtis 2009 22:27:12 Ana Guerrero wrote:
> > 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:

Nobody from Debian Qt/KDE team has expected (or dreamt of) the freeze to 
happen so early hence the announcement was quite shocking. If we freeze in 
December 2009, squeeze will be stuck with KDE 4.3.{3,4} and Qt 4.5.3. Is this 
good or bad? Well, I don't see much to clap for here:

1) *Very* bad timing for Qt release. As it was pointed out, Debian will freeze 
with Qt 4.5 (basically EOLed upstream) and Qt 4.6 right around the corner. 
Given Qt major releases are rather slow (every ~8-10 months) and Debian stable 
actually releases with Qt 4.5 in late Q2 of 2010, that would be only 2-4 
months until Qt 4.7. So who is going care to about Qt 4.5 then? Nor upstream, 
nor users and it is a big question if we will.

2) Regarding KDE itself, actually 4.3.{3,4} is not the worst candidate for 
Debian stable from the KDE 4.3 series, probably the best. But is 4.3 series a 
good candidate for Debian stable? Frankly, quality of KDE 4.3.0 suggests KDE 4 
still needs some work on stability front: memory leaks, kwin cpu usage, io 
usage and plasma-desktop crashes / bugs. Some of this might be Xorg bugs as 
well. What is more, if we push Qt 4.6 into stable somehow, KDE 4.3 probably 
won't work well with it and given that the most probable candidate for 
flackiness is plasma, nobody should expect fixes for this from upstream. Hence 
the whole picture of KDE 4.3 desktop still looks lacking.

3) Some important features are still missing like usable network manager 
integration, root administration in systemsettings (and overall situation with 
policykit), completely broken nepomum/soprano. Not to mention that some 
important third party KDE applications (e.g. k3b) are not ported to KDE 4 yet 
or existing ports are lacking in features. Only time can resolve these 
problems.

4) unstable has been open for too short period of time. Remember, KDE 4 is a 
fresh thing in unstable/testing, 9 months of limited (and otherwise restricted 
by overall size of Qt/KDE and testing transitions since KDE links whole Debian 
together) testing is not enough. Not to mention that neither of us expected to 
release with KDE 4.3 and didn't give (nor will give now being late to the 
party) to it as much care as it probably needed to.

> > * 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.

Yes, Debian stable should not ship KDE or Qt .0 releases, .1 in the worst 
case, .2 or .3 would be perfect.

> > * 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.

Yes, "stable Debian package" does not take long but it is as stable as 
packaged upstream KDE is which is a big variable in early point releases.

> > * 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.

I agree, nothing very complicated remains.

> 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...

Squeeze will and should ship KDE 3 libs / Qt 3. But the goal to get rid of as 
much KDE 3 / Qt 3 apps as possible is still important.

> What could be removed is arts (and we would love to), but it needs some
> work on it.

I don't understand why nobody considers splitting artsd off (and do not pull 
it in by default) and forgetting about it. Who wants to transition kdelibs4c2a 
and rip users off from sound in their KDE 3 applications?

> 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....

In my opinion, Squeeze should aim at >= KDE 4.4.2, >= Qt 4.6.1. That would be 
around the end of Q1 2010 / beginning of Q2 2010. If freezing in late summer / 
early autumn, aim at the latest Qt 4.6.x and >= KDE 4.5.1.

-- 
Modestas Vainius <modestas at vainius.eu>
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