KDE plans for the squeeze cycle

[Ana Guerrero]

Hi Marc et all,

I will answer including also Qt 4 plans, that as you know is a quite
important part of KDE 4 :)

> * 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?

About KDE
----------

We currently have KDE 4.3.0 in unstable.
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 any further 
point releases are highly preferred to ship in a Debian stable release.
In case of freezing with a .0 (or .1) release, we would like to be given the 
possibility of upload the next point releases given that point releases have so 
far contained fewer regressions than actual bug fixes.
Having a .2 or .3 point release would be the ideal.

We would like to mention that neither of us expected to release with KDE 4.3.X 
and we didn't give (nor will give now being late to the party) to it as much 
care as it probably needed to.

About Qt
---------
We currently have Qt 4.5.2 in the archive and the development and expectations 
are on Qt 4.6. This release is expected about the end of this year or worse case, 
very early 2010.
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 its entire life span.
It is also worth mentioning Qt 4.5.x doesn't support GCC 4.4 (and won't), Qt 4.6 
will do. 
As with KDE the best is always shipping with a point release and Qt 4.6.1 is our 
minimal target.


> * How much time do you usually need from a new upstream release of KDE
>   to a stable Debian package in unstable?

KDE releases the tarballs to packagers one week before release, so packagers
have time to prepare the packaging. We usually get something ready (with the
4.x releases) for release day, sometimes with some bugs, sometimes not. These
bugs are usually weeded out during a week or two after this.

For point releases, which is only bug fix releases, we usually get the
packaging fully right at first upload, which happens around release day.


> * How many "big" transitions will the upcoming changes cause? When should those
>   happen? Can we do something to make them easier?

We already have done most of the complicated stuff when moving from kde 3 to kde 4.
We have some stuff we would like to do but nothing too big or "must do" before next
release.	


If we could plan the Debian release cycle completely after what would be good
for KDE, squeeze will freeze shortly after KDE 4.5.0 is uploaded to Debian
(July 2010) and the 4.5.x point releases would be allowed in.

KDE would have the possibility to take advantage of the new things in Qt4.6, and 
we would reach Qt4.6.2 or something like that on the Qt side.