Jesús Guerrero wrote: > On Tue, July 28, 2009 09:29, Hanno Böck wrote: >> While I fully understand that people want to deprecate "old cruft", I >> assume this is far too early. (just think back how long it took us to >> deprecate gtk+-1) > > I fully agree with this thought. The qt4 world is simply nowhere near > as complete and usable (nor stable either, which is worse) as the qt3 > one is. > >> I'm still on kde 3 and my previous three attemps to switch to kde 4 all >> ended up in the conclusion that kde 4 is far from being stable yet. It has >> tons of regressions.
Please note that you need to make a distinction between Qt4 and KDE4! The KDE team had already decided to move KDE3 to an overlay early next year, with the release of 4.4. We as Qt team are just following suit. It's just that the KDE team hasn't made as public an announcement yet. A KDE 4.3 version is supposed to be marked stable within the next few months, and this then clears the way for KDE3 deprecation. When KDE3 will be removed early 2010, we as Qt team see no need to keep Qt3 around any longer either. We currently have no developers who are interested in maintaining it, and upstream doesn't either. Qt4 really is a major improvement over Qt3, especially where it concerns non-KDE apps. >> The amount of qt3 apps not having a sane or just no qt4 port yet is >> probably enormous. I also maintain such packages. > > [...] k3b, and [...] kaffeine These are KDE apps, so you need to address the KDE team about that, not the Qt team. But I'm assuming that if these have no working KDE4-based version by early next year, that's just too bad. And on the other hand, for those people who still want to use these applications, there will be the overlay. So, there are very few "pure" Qt3 apps, and even fewer that have no Qt4 port yet. The only major project I'm aware of is MythTV. If there are any others please let me know. > The qt3 stuff is stable, this is not another xmms-like thing, it works, > and it doesn't only work, but today it works *far better* than the qt4 > newer alternatives, in most cases anyway. No, Qt4 works far better than Qt3, and has loads more features. Of course, it is up to the application developers how to use this. Do not confuse KDE4 instability with Qt4 instability. If you compare non-KDE Qt3 apps with non-KDE Qt4 apps, the huge improvements should be self-evident. Even so, our main argument is the question of maintenance. We want to stop wasting time on Qt3 related issues, especially as (1) it is no longer maintained upstream, and (2) its main consumer, KDE3, is scheduled for removal from portage. If you feel passionate about Qt3 and want to make the case for keeping it in portage, then step up and become its maintainer. Cheers, Ben
