KDE 3.2 release cycle

[Ingo Klöcker]

On Sunday 11 May 2003 18:14, Mosfet wrote:
> Okay, I know everyone is talking about this, but I also think the
> KDE3.2 release date needs to be moved up. I've been using CVS HEAD
> and at least for what I am using it is quite stable and has more than
> enough new functionality to justify a new release. I know there is a
> ton of things people want to do but 3.2 is just a minor point
> release, not KDE4.0. I'm rather impressed with what has been done
> already, esp in regards to Konqueror and Kontact/KMail.

Well, Kontact/KMail is already more or less usable. But it's still far 
from being working really smoothly and user friendly. The basic 
functionally is there. But there are still quite a few rough edges.

> The reasoning for this is while we all know what is going on and how
> much things are improving users generally don't. So we look like a
> slow turtle compared to other projects that do, (unofficial),
> releases with long changelogs every couple months. Development has
> been impressive, we should show it off either with unofficial
> releases or by doing stable releases more often. We are not very far
> from something that could be a stable release, but even doing an
> unofficial release would be an improvement from the current process,
> which is a long wait between KDE3.1 and 3.2. Just expecting people to
> use CVS is not enough, they want snapshots with changelogs,
> screenshots, and other goodies. Even if the project just grabbed a
> CVS snapshot that is determined to be relatively stable and released
> it with a changelog and documentation, that would be an improvement.

It's really not that easy. If people try out whatever version we release 
then they expect that those releases don't trash their data (even if we 
mark the releases as alpha releases). With KMail we currently can't 
guarantee that the new cached IMAP implementation which surely a lot of 
people will want to give a try will kill all your mail. In fact, this 
already happened to one or two people who are using the cvs version. 
Therefore KMail is currently not in a releasable state (not even as 
alpha release because many normal users don't grok what alpha release 
means). Not that you get me wrong, in general the current development 
version is very stable. But it's just not ready for the general public.

BTW, Don Sanders already released two pre-releases of Kontact (actually 
this is only a stable development version of KMail and the Kontact 
shell). So people have already the chance to test some of the new KMail 
features.

Regards,
Ingo

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