From kde-core-devel Tue Jan 24 20:29:31 2006 From: Kurt Pfeifle Date: Tue, 24 Jan 2006 20:29:31 +0000 To: kde-core-devel Subject: Proposal to plan for "Milestone Releases" on the way to KDE4 Message-Id: <200601242124.50741.k1pfeifle () gmx ! net> X-MARC-Message: https://marc.info/?l=kde-core-devel&m=113813457123554 --------------------------------------------------------------- Proposal to plan for "Milestone Releases" on the way to KDE4 --------------------------------------------------------------- Currently the KDE membership association ("KDE e.V." in the official abbreviation in German legalese) is in the process to install a Technical Working Group (TWG) to guide and help the KDE4 development process and make the transition from the KDE3 to the KDE4 platform as efficient as possible. Some work is already in full swing, mainly for porting kdelibs to Qt4. Subprojects have been announced by some groups, some already quite a while ago: Tenor, Plasma, Tenor, Oxygen, Solid, KDEMM/Phonon,... Ideas about new naming conventions are brought forward. API docs are meant to be taken to a new level. There is a new willingness, even cupidity to involve the help from usability engineers (such as are assembled behind the OpenUsability.org webpage) right from the start when designing new applications and user interfaces. One of the currently debated topics is the question of "timescale for KDE4". On some mailing lists, in blogs, and in some IRC channels controversial arguments are exchanged. Is it realistic to aim for a 4.0 release this year? May it be even 2 years from now before it can happen? If it takes so long -- shouldnt we have a KDE 3.6 release? But will such a 3.6 release not take away valuable development time from the effort to get out 4.0 in the shortest amount of time? A few weeks ago, I myself tended to give my support to a 3.6 release, mainly bridge the long wait for 4.0 to mature and arrive. Not any more. I'm convinced now that a 3.6 will only delay the 4.0 even more than it should be. But I *still* want to bridge the gap until a stable KDE 4.0 is ready to ship, especially if it takes longer than expected. So here is my proposal for a way forward, and which could be a first collection of ideas for the upcoming TWG to work with... IMHO there are 2 different things we could do (independently from each other) to bridge the time, and make even good use of it:  * Draft a roadmap for KDE 4.0 (and publish it) that includes at least one (or better, several) milestone releases.  * Aim for one (or maybe two?) "KDE Application" releases, based on KDE *3.5* technology (kdelibs and kdebase, certainly on Qt-3.3.x). ## The KDE 4.0 milestones will be based on the evolving KDE4 ## technology. We could call them 3.9.0, 3.9.1, etc. and make clear that these are not meant for production use, but for public beta testing, gathering feedback, stresstesting newly developed ideas, technologies and implementations and ideas. This way, it would be a rather short time even if the final 4.0 takes 15 or more months (Summer 2007?) to mature. But a first milestone for users and app developers to play with could be out in late summer or authumn. ## The "Grand KDE Application Release for 2006" we *could* call a ## "3.6". (But better still, we could come up with a "sexy" release code name). However, it for sure won't be based on fundamentally new technology; it would utilize all maturity and stability of the KDE3 platform and give it a final polish. KDE3 will be used by *lots* of people and organisations for years to come.... Such a release would rather be a coordinated, joint and orchestrated release of all the great "extragear", "playground" and "third party" applications KDE currently has, and which did in the past organize their own releases, schedules and PR. Many of these apps seem to me currently being continued fullspeed in development by their creators who do not want to wait until kdelibs4 and kdebase4 are ready and stable to be used to code against. Also, such a release could serve as a real testbed for the viability of some ideas Aaron has put forward in his blog a while ago (which aimed at differentiating between KDE, "the core technology platform", and KDE, "the applications built on top of it" by even giving them different names/branding etc.) It could happen probably in July or August. I'm sure, the KDE Marketing people will also be more than willing to help make such a release a success, even if it "only" features a collection of some of the best and most polished KDE applications who will be reaching new features from now until summer (because their maintainers can't use a not-yet-existing KDE4 foundation, but have already lots of new features in the pipeline based on KDE3). In short: * Those developers who do want to concentrate on "porting and designing for KDE 4.0" could do so, without much pressure for early releases of production-ready code. * The other group, who do not feel they have fun in coding kdelibs, but who want to get their apps' new features to their user base as soon as possible (and who can't yet really start coding against the shifting KDE4 platform) can continue to focus on their interests. And from after Summer, once the first milestone is released, the KDE4 platform could be good enough for each current KDE application to start coding against (even if the 2nd and 3rd milestones should change APIs or core technology in places). * Our user base would still be getting their expectations satisfied, at least to a good degree; KDE4 development could take the time it needs to mature and gain as well lots of valuable "field experience" along the way from the milestone releases. If time permits, I'll add a few more thoughs about these two proposals later tonight. Cheers, Kurt