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List:       kde-community
Subject:    Re: Proposal unify back our release schedules
From:       Martin =?ISO-8859-1?Q?Fl=F6ser?= <mgraesslin () kde ! org>
Date:       2024-04-24 17:56:15
Message-ID: 4088844.jtyGRaXDez () martin-yoga
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Am Freitag, 19. April 2024, 11:04:33 CEST schrieb Carl Schwan:
> Currently this is just a proposal, not a vote proposal or anything like
> that. I'll be happy to receive positive or negative feedback on this idea.

Reading through the proposal and the discussion, I think we need to think a 
little bit outside of the box. I have the feeling that most devs still see 
Linux distributions as the primary way to distribute our software. I do not 
think that this is universal true anymore and if we move away from it, this 
would open up way new possibilities.

Let's assume for apps we see Flathub/Snaps/Windows Store/whatever store as our 
primary distribution channel, this would give us quite some advantages:

 * less duplicated work for distributions
 * no problems with "this framework release is not packaged yet"
 * no overwhelmed work for distributions due to too many packages need to be 
updated
 * no need to push an update if nothing changed
 * no random "this pulls in KDE" due to incorrect packaging
 * always up to date software for our users
 * no bad experience due to missing (optional) dependencies
 * easy release for the maintainers without needing a release team (what about 
a Gitlab create release pipeline the maintainer can press)

So this would totally open up a new way to release and distribute "Gear". And 
with Gear being easily available for everyone this would also give the 
possibility to move things into Plasma which belong into Plasma, but haven't 
been for "this is an app and also usable on other desktop". What comes in my 
mind is everything that are essential apps for a decent desktop experience:

 * dolphin
 * spectacle
 * an image viewer (gwenview/koko, etc.)
 * okular
 * ...

Those could still be apps, but be released together with Plasma, thus also 
tightly integrate with Plasma while at the same time be distributed through 
other channels.

Such a model should also help with the development experience. I read a few 
comments about it being a problem on depending on frameworks master - I agree 
that is a problem. But not so much if there is always an up to date 
development container available to pull and hack on. If apps are 
containerized, their build environment can also be containerized.

So my suggestion: think about more than just the release cycle and the 
alignment of the releases if you are going to touch this (hot) topic.

Cheers
Martin


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