[kde-community] Proposal One: KDE (Core) Apps and Suites

[Albert Astals Cid]

El Dimecres, 30 d'abril de 2014, a les 10:48:44, Jos Poortvliet va escriure:
> On Monday 28 April 2014 11:08:34 Martin Klapetek wrote:
> > On Fri, Apr 25, 2014 at 10:12 PM, Jos Poortvliet <
> > 
> > jospoortvlietstanburdman at gmail.com <jospoortvliet at gmail.com>> wrote:
> > > I think the idea of grouping releases ('Sigma'?) is a good one. How
> > > about
> > > we
> > > start there. Let's give Applications more freedom, yet allow them to be
> > > part
> > > of the 'bunch', yes? Calligra, Amarok, the Extragear apps - they should
> > > be
> > > part of the KDE Applications. Fold it all in there, with more
> > > flexibility
> > > thanks to more regular (but non-mandatory) releases. Yes, everybody
> > > their
> > > own
> > > release numbers, no synchronization needed at all. Not every release
> > > needs
> > > every application, but perhaps for convenience of distro's we provide
> > > everything in a tarball- just not with updated version numbers. They can
> > > ship
> > > KDE Applications 2015.6 (?) and be sure to have all of them, but many of
> > > the
> > > apps might not be different from those in KDE Applications 2015.2.
> > 
> > I think the release numbers should be all the same and perhaps even the
> > number of the "Sigma" release (also, we should come up with something else
> > than "Sigma" before it catches on and stays...like "SC"...unless we want
> > it
> > to stay). Otherwise it will be a mess imho - "KDE Applications 2015.6
> > contains Dolphin 5.2.1, Calligra 7.8, Amarok 4.6.4, Kontact 5.3.1" -- "KDE
> > Applications 2015.12 contains Dolphin 5.2.3, Calligra 8.1, Amarok 4.8.2,
> > Kontact 5.4.1"....are those own version numbers really that important? It
> > could just as well be "Dolphin 2015.6" or "Amarok 2015.12" (or some other
> > numbers), but unified. More coherent, more clear, more simple. The
> > downside I see is that the apps' developers would need to commit to this
> > new policy, which might hit some resistance.
> 
> Look at what we try to do here: message that our applications are separate
> and independent. There is nothing about Ktouch that requires Amarok, and
> Words is just fine without Kanagram. The fact that, on a release engineering
> level, we release them in batches - that is irrelevant for users. They just
> get the one app they want, be it for Windows, Mac, Linux, Android...
> 
> Delivering it as a 'suite' with the same version numbers gives the
> impression they do belong together. But they don't - the only thing KDE
> software has in common is the people who make it. Functionally, you can use
> them anywhere, alone or in groups, separate or combined.
> 
> Also - most apps wouldn't release with every sigma release, so more than
> half our applications is out of sync most of the time. Having Kontact and
> Gwenview 2014.8 and Words and Palapeli 2014.6 and Amarok 2015.2 all being
> the latest version seems more confusing than Kontact 1.8, Gwenview 2.3 etc
> etc on their own. That is what people are used too.
> 
> I don't see a strong argument for syncing the release numbers, the confusing
> part doesn't convince me. There's plenty of different version numbers on
> your system atm ;-)
> 
> But if anybody knows a good reason to sync, say so please.

There are a few reaons to sync releases: 
 * Most of the devels of "KDE Applications" apps don't want to do the releases 
themselves after 15 years of a release team doing it for them
 * Having synched release schedules for "KDE Applications" like we have done 
for 15 years allows me to know easily if an application is on freeze or not, 
if suddenly as a developer I have to keep track of 160 different release 
schedules, count me out of doing fixes in those apps.
 * We have lots of applications with "no real maintainer" but I can still go 
there, fix something that is i18n related and know it will be release next 
month with the next "KDE Applications" release, with your plan of "everyone 
releases its own stuff" my fix would never reach the user.

Cheers,
  Albert