[Digikam-users] Future plan : next KDE4 release and future Qt5 port.

[Gilles Caulier]

Hi all digiKam users,

Today, 4.6.0 source code have been tagged in git repository. Release
will be published in few days when tarball will be ready on KDE
download area...

The KDE4 releases will continue. As usual one month, one release,
including bugfixes only. No major new features will be add.

In parallel, Qt5/KF5 port will be started. The digiKam branch in git
repository will be created soon. Port of code will take a while,
certainly 5/6 months to check all regressions and possible
dysfunctions introduced by code conversion.

The Qt5 port will introduce some advantages, as a reduced KDE
dependency everywhere. The goal is too limit now all KDE API uses when
it's possible, in the way to have the most portable application. If
something as Clementine player can be done with digiKam, this will be
the best. It's possible to have an application adapted well to a
target, as Marble do (KDE, Qt, Android, etc...). The hardest way to
drop KDE dependency will be KIO-Slave, but it's another story for the
moment and not a priority.

Anyway, port to Qt5 is already started since one month, as you can see
at this wiki page :

https://techbase.kde.org/Projects/Digikam/CodingSprint2014#KDE_Framework_Port

All digiKam shared libs are ported, and few kipi-plugins tools too.
It's still a lots of work to do, and all patches introduced to KDE4
branch must be backported to Qt5 branch. This take a while and this is
why next digiKam > 4.x patches must be limited and not too intrusive.

Voilà, for the future plan. All help to port code, run test, report
regressions and others kind of contributions are welcome of course.

Best

Gilles Caulier