From kde-core-devel Wed Mar 22 16:53:33 2006 From: Lubos Lunak Date: Wed, 22 Mar 2006 16:53:33 +0000 To: kde-core-devel Subject: 3.5.x weakened feature freeze Message-Id: <200603221753.33959.l.lunak () suse ! cz> X-MARC-Message: https://marc.info/?l=kde-core-devel&m=114304642132670 Hello, we (TWG) would like to slightly weaken the feature freeze for KDE3.5.x. And let's make one point clear first: We do NOT at all encourage further KDE3.x development, rather the opposite - we need people working on KDE4. However there will be a long time between KDE3.5.0 and KDE4 and there are already patches that would otherwise be in KDE3.6 if there was any and we'd like to allow some of those in. The requirements for a new feature to get in KDE3.5.x are: - it needs to be already in trunk - we already have lot of code that went only into KDE3.5.x and not trunk, no need to make this even worse - it needs to be complete and ready - don't ask "I plan to develop this feature for 3.5.x, will it get in?" - it needs to be well-tested - create a branch or a patch and have it tested by other people, or even make independent public releases (kde-apps.org, in some distribution packages, whatever) - it needs to respect other freezes - if no new i18n messages are allowed, no feature changing those is allowed either - it needs to be committed no later than a month before the next release is tagged (right now there's no date for 3.5.3, but presumably all releases will be announced at least a month in advance) - it must be mentioned in the changelog of the release (marked with "New:") - commit log must include "approved by ..." and don't forget the FEATURE: tag where applicable - last and the most important: It must be posted to the mailing list for the SVN module (kde-core-devel for those without) and must be approved by the module's maintainer (TWG for those without) If this proves to cause way too many trouble for any reason, this exception will be cancelled. Common sense translation: The message is not "feature freeze is cancelled, but please be careful" but rather "feature freeze lasts, but finished features that are worth the risk may get an exception". It is meant for cases like "there is this bunch of large patches that improve KDE startup performance, they have received enough testing in packages for SUSE10.1 so they should be rock-stable and it would be really really nice to have them in official KDE but we can't only because of the freeze[*]". If somebody posts "I wrote this nice new kioslave yesterday afternoon, it seems to work just fine", prepare to get shot. If you start writing something new for 3.5.x in the hope that it will be included later, you risk being eventually refused. Nobody's stopping you from doing independent releases of your app though. [*] Ok, yes, those are my patches. I'm quite sure there will be more patches like that though. -- Lubos Lunak KDE developer --------------------------------------------------------------------- SuSE CR, s.r.o. e-mail: l.lunak@suse.cz , l.lunak@kde.org Drahobejlova 27 tel: +420 2 9654 2373 190 00 Praha 9 fax: +420 2 9654 2374 Czech Republic http://www.suse.cz/