Proposal to plan for "Milestone Releases" on the way to KDE4

[Nicolas Goutte]

On Tuesday 24 January 2006 23:25, Kurt Pfeifle wrote:
(...)
> The Grand KDE Application Release 2006 ("3.6.0"?):
> --------------------------------------------------
> - It would allow all those extragear and playground developers who
>   find it too early to start porting to KDE 4 to continue their
>   work with apps full speed based on 3.5 kdebase and kdelibs.

Extragear applications are released by themselves. The plan to release stable 
release extragear applications in one go has never been pushed further than 
the branches/stable directories.

Also, as far as I know, Stephan Kulow has refused and I asume that he still 
refuses to be a release manager for a KDE 3.6.0 (at least before KDE4, but I 
suppose that he would not be a volunteer for after it either.) 

So we would need a volunteer for a release manager. However I do not know 
where such a volunteer would come, as this is not the "first call" for such a 
volunteer.

> - It would give a good leverage for marketing and promoting some of
>   the extremley good "single" KDE applications (who at the current
>   time mostly do their own releases, their own PR and their own
>   scheduling "in isolation" from each other, rather than in a more
>   coordinated way, and without good support from the MWG (yes, I
>   am aware that it also has advantages for app developers if they
>   can go ahead in their own speed, and releases independently from
>   other subprojects).
> - It would also be a good testing ground for the proposal Aaron made
>   sometime back (which aimed at differentiating between KDE "the core
>   technology platform" and KDE "the applications build on top of it"
>   by even giving them different names/branding etc.)

>
> Which apps come to mind?
> ------------------------
>   * First --- quanta/kommander, kmail/kontact, kdeedu, kate...;
>   * then -- amarok, digikam, gwenview, kphotoalbum/kimdaba, koffice,
>     krita, k3b, kmplayer, kaffeine, ktorrent, kile, datakiosk, kst,
>     guidance, kdissert, kalzium, kstars, kig, ktouch, kalva, kopete,
>     guidance -- man!, *do* we have a lot of kick-ass applications!
>     And they are often underrated and/or unknown to many users. They
>     would benefit lots from participating in a joint release effort
>     happening once (or twice?) over the next 12-18 months and being
>     guided by the MWG (who would gain lots of "practicing" for
>     the 4.0 releases and its milestones too :)  [Yes, and I am
>     aware that Krita is part of and deeply embedded into KOffice;
>     but need it stay so? Is a Photoshop-like app part of an Office
>     Suite?)

But you cannot fraction KDE modules and releases what pleases you. such files 
would en up in a RPM or DEB file and you cannot have a same file in a few RPM 
files. (We had long ago such problems with KOffice translations that were in 
KDE too.)

So you would need other names for applications, libraries, public include 
files etc.. So whoever wants this can transform his application into an 
extragear and releases it himself, as it would need the same steps.

Or you release a full KDE 3.6 but then we start back at the problem of not 
having a release manager...

>   * and last -- there are lots of goodies developed completely
>     outside of KDE SVN: kat, smb4k, luma, tellico, basket, mateedit,
>     ktechlab, kmymoney, kbarcode, taskjuggler, kalgebra, kchmviewer,
>     noteedit, rosegarden, eric3, kdiff3, twinkle, wengophone,
>     texmaker, apollon, labplot, klamav,...
>   * I've surely forgotten some -- please forgive me and add yourself
>     to the list....
>
(...)

Have a nice day!