Moving Baloo and Baloo-widgets into KDE SC

[Thomas Lübking]

On Freitag, 10. Januar 2014 11:28:34 CEST, Sebastian Kügler wrote:

> with the long 
> term support workspace out, so we can recommend people to use 
> that, if they're slightly more adventurous, run 4.13
I'm not sure whether I understand that - afaiu there will be no workspace > 4.11 ever, but other parts (baseapps) etc. proceed - and nepomuk/baloo crosses those releases.

Ie. you'd tell them to
- stay with workspace 4.11.x (x being the release right before the change to baloo) and nepomuk and also all other packages of that time (eg. 4.12.4), iow. simply stop updating at all or to
- stay with workspace pre-baloo and only update other parts to baloo versions, what will likely create a mess in the semantic desktop stuff or to
- just update as usual, accepting a potential friction (for clients/features "relying" on lost nepomuk)

Ie. to either stop updating or be prepeared for migration trouble on the semantic desktop front.

I think what Christoph wanted to say was:
please don't start baloo like what ended nepomuk.


> Communicated in the right way

My 2¢?
Assuming you want to replace nepomuk by baloo in SC4:
 
   Draw a fat red line.

Publically announce *now* that the sematic desktop system will get an internal update that will preserve general functionality, but is unfortunately incompatible with the present nepomuk approach.
This will happen with [release here] in about [n] weeks, what implies to rather skip that particular version for productive systems - if you rely on semantic desktop features.

This was decided to happen now, because KDE SC 4 will continue to be the "stable" KDE desktop environment for [estimated time here] and the semantic desktop either needs a major overhaul or is best not used at all, ie. the alternative would have been to schedule this for KF5 & PW/2 and declare the "fix" for semantic desktop issues to not use a semantic desktop.

There'll be migration tools, but every further KDE SC release will not provide *any* support for nepomuk anymore (beyond ABI compatibility library stubs)
If you crucially rely on a clients nepomuk features, you can check [wiki url] to see whether it's already available in a baloo version - otherwise do not update KDE SC beyond that version until it is.

Contrary to other suggestions i can also only recommend to ditch "nepomuk" as name to not leave any ambiguity.
According to the reasons mentioned in this thread ("most hated"), the name is burned anyway, but the main reason is that ppl. talk about semantic desktop features by the term "nepomuk" and that will lead to confusion since (if) you cut "legacy" nepomuk support ("nepomuk is running, but does not work in client xyz")
So communicate that nepomuk (and support for it) goes, baloo comes, the semantic desktop idea stays - just without virtuoso.

Publish eg. an interview with Vishesh that outlines the major differences between nepomuk and baloo and the major benefits of this change.



Cheers,
Thomas