New unstable digiKam 8.2.0 Windows installer based on Qt6+KF6...

[Gilles Caulier]

Hi all,

The first version of 8.2.0 Windows 64 installer build with VCPKG
tool-chain under Windows 10 is available here :

https://files.kde.org/digikam/unstable/

Currently the non debug version is online as an NSIS binary installer
and a portable tarball. The debug version will arrive in one hours.

This version has all supported features of digiKam, including mysql
(not tested yet), heif, aom, jpegxl support, qtwebengine for the cloud
service connection, Exiv2 0.28, etc. The missing feature is
ImageMagick image loader which must be replaced by GraphicsMagick.
This last one is only available under VCPKG, and image loader code
must be ported to the GM API which differs from IM.

digiKam is compiled with MSVC compiler from Microsoft, with Qt6
(stable 6.6.0) and KDE frameworks version 6 not yet released as stable
(this planned for February 2024). Installer is not signed with
Microsoft CERT, as we need to pay around 150-100€ per year, which I
refuse to do by policy. Who wants to bloat Microsoft with money coming
from an open source project. I cannot accept that at all.

So to install digiKam under Windows 10 and later, you need to tune the
security rules from Windows control panel as explained in the online
documentation here :

https://docs.digikam.org/fr/getting_started/installation.html#digikam-on-windows

Voilà, do not use yet in production, just for testing, as the KDE
framework used with this Windows version is not yet released. It's
dedicated to tests only...

Best regards

Gilles Caulier