[RFC] KDE 4.0 Release Roadmap

[Thiago Macieira]

Allen Winter wrote:
>Howdy,
>
>Hereby we, the Release Team, present a draft KDE 4.0 Release roadmap
> which has been discussed on our mailinglist the past few weeks. It's an
> optimistic schedule that aims to release in late October, based on 3
> Beta's and 2 release candidates.

Hello Allen

Thanks for being the spokesman. I want to start by saying thank you to you 
and the Release Team for coming up with the plan.

I have no major problems with it. I'll point out the minor ones below.

>KDE 4.0 will not contain all features announced nor promised: these will
>come during the lifetime of KDE 4.  We can probably switch quickly to a
>KDE 4.1 release if there are major subsystems ready for merging soon
> after the KDE 4.0 hits the streets. Also remember that we have been
> porting for a couple years and we need to get this show on the road.

The discussion in the marketing mailing list seems to indicate that we can 
deliver all features we promised for KDE 4.0. At least the hyped ones.

In any case, we should make it clear what is going to be part of the 4.0 
release in the techbase website.

>  KDE 4.0 Roadmap
>===============
>
>Milestone: Subsystem Freeze
>Date: 1 April 2007
>Goals:
> * From this date forward, no major KDE subsystem can be committed to
> kdelibs. 

What do you understand as major subsystem? Things the size of Phonon and 
Solid?

Because I have two in mind:
1) KNetwork's replacement. I wouldn't call this a major subsystem: I would 
call it a minor wrapper around QtNetwork. The current subsystem 
(KNetwork) will simply be removed without going to KDE3Support because I 
won't maintain it (and because you cannot use two independent resolver 
subsystems in the same application on non-Linux systems).

2) I have an idea in mind for KIO::Connection, which won't go higher than 
KIO::Job. This is all backend stuff and may or may not have impact on the 
front-end. If it does, it'll be minor (i.e., remove the command ID 
constants from the public headers).

Would those be considered major subsystems?

>Milestone: Alpha Release + kdelibs soft API Freeze
>Date: 1 May 2007
>Goals:
> * Qt 4.3 is required from here until release.

1 May is too late to *start* this requirement. I agree that by 1 May, it 
will be required. But I need to start requiring it before.

Some things in my projects above require Qt 4.3 features. I cannot wait 
until the soft freeze to merge those projects.

> * The kdelibs API is frozen. This means that the classes and interfaces
> are not allowed to change, except with permission of the core
> developers. 
> * To make an API change, post a kdelibs API exception 
> request to the kde-core-devel mailinglist with an explanation and the
> code. If there are no objections after a week, the change can be
> committed. NOTE: all affected modules must continue to compile and work
> as expected.

Makes sense.

By "API change", do I understand correctly "source- or binary-incompatible 
change"? If so, we'd still be allowed to complement the API, provided we 
don't change what's already there.

>Milestone: Beta Cycle, Full kdelibs API Freeze
>Start: 25 June 2007  End: 24 September 2007  Duration: 3 months
> (estimated) Goals:
> * From this date forward, a Beta Version will be published every month
>   until most grave bugs are resolved.
> * The kdelibs API is now frozen solid.

I think this freeze might include libraries in other modules. Probably by 
the Feature Freeze time, we'd make a list of libraries in such 
conditions.

I was especially thinking of kdepimlibs, but it'll depend mostly if that 
module will follow the release schedule. In any event, we have libraries 
like libkdeedu and libkdegames that will probably have to freeze.

What I didn't comment on means I agree completely.

-- 
  Thiago Macieira  -  thiago (AT) macieira.info - thiago (AT) kde.org
    PGP/GPG: 0x6EF45358; fingerprint:
    E067 918B B660 DBD1 105C  966C 33F5 F005 6EF4 5358
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