> 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 -- http://lists.alioth.debian.org/mailman/listinfo/pkg-kde-talk
