From kde-core-devel Mon Jul 21 11:26:32 2014 From: Frank Reininghaus Date: Mon, 21 Jul 2014 11:26:32 +0000 To: kde-core-devel Subject: KDE Applications December 2014 release: which apps are targeting Qt4/Qt5? Message-Id: X-MARC-Message: https://marc.info/?l=kde-core-devel&m=140594201017281 Hello everyone, after KDE SC 4.14, the next release of the KDE applications that are part of the KDE SC is planned for December. It will contain not only applications that are still based on Qt4+kdelibs 4.x, but also applications that have the first stable release of their Qt5+KF5 ports [1]. All application developers/maintainers can decide if they want to release another Qt4+kdelibs 4.x-based version, or if they want to release their first Qt5+KF5-based version. I think it would be helpful if there was a central site where information about the choices that developers have taken so far is collected, i.e., a place where everyone can look up quickly if application XYZ will have a Qt4-based or a Qt5-based release, or if it is still in the "not decided yet" state. One of the reasons why I consider such a thing useful is that quite a few applications have runtime dependencies that are provided other applications. For example, * Many applications have an embedded terminal, which is provided by the Konsole KPart. If Konsole does not release a Qt5-based version in December, then any application which does will not have an embedded terminal any more. * All of Konqueror's functionality is provided by KParts that are provided by libraries and applications and that are loaded at runtime. If some of these KParts will not have a Qt5-based release, then the functionality of a Qt5-based Konqueror would be severely limited. There are probably many more (and less obvious) examples of such run-time dependencies. Releasing these Qt5-based applications without their runtime dependencies will result in feature loss, and I'm afraid that this might lead to some users, who will probably expect a smooth transition to Qt5+KF5 because they can read everywhere that the port should be much simpler than the Qt3->Qt4 transition was (except for projects which take the opportunity to make some other architectural changes at the same time, such as Plasma) and the media saying "It's the old KDE 4.0 story again". I think that we should try to prevent that, and I believe that a central site where everyone can look up the release plans of all applications would be helpful. I've created a draft of a wiki page where this information could be collected at https://community.kde.org/User:Freininghaus/draft-Qt4-Qt5-application-overview What do you think about this idea? If there is agreement that my idea makes sense, I would move this page to a suitable place (maybe https://community.kde.org/Frameworks/Application-release-status-December-2014 ?) and send a message to k-c-d and kde-devel, asking all maintainers/core developers to fill in any relevant information that they already have. Suggestions for improving the page are also welcome, of course. If you see a typo or another obvious thing that needs fixing, just edit the page directly. Thanks and best regards, Frank [1] See, e.g., http://mail.kde.org/pipermail/release-team/2014-July/007932.html