Dropping kdelibs4-based applications in KDE Applications 17.12

[Luigi Toscano]

On Friday, 11 November 2016 18:24:42 CET Christoph Feck wrote:
> On 11.11.2016 16:45, Dominik Haumann wrote:
> > On Thu, Nov 10, 2016 at 11:42 PM, Albert Astals Cid <aacid at kde.org> wrote:
> >> Hi, my proposal would be to make KDE Applications 17.08 the last release
> >> we
> >> accept applications based on kdelibs4, that means people have a year
> >> until KDE Applications 17.12 to port the applications from the list
> >> below to KF5.
> >> 
> >> The ones that aren't ported we would just drop to unmaintained or if they
> >> have an active developer team that somehow doesn't want to move to KF5
> >> they could move to "extreagear".
> 
> Will we still release the KDE4 platform for not-yet-ported extragear
> applications (Amarok etc.) with 17.12?
> 
> If we stop releasing it, then we should also move all unported
> applications to 'unmaintained'. Any developer willing to port can
> surrect it from there.

I don't see a direct connection. This discussion is about KDE Applications, 
and while I totally agree on having extragear applications ported as well as 
soon as possible and we should try to see which active applications are still 
unported, forcing them from not being released is a bit too much (i.e. they 
could release bugfixes for kdelibs4 versions, for example).

> 
> >> I know lots of you would want to see this happen *now* but remember
> >> there's
> >> people using those apps so dropping them makes them no good.
> >> 
> >> Comments?
> > 
> > I think this is a very good idea and support this.
> > 
> > However, the list you provided is possibly longer, for instance there
> > are applications that are not part of this the Applications release. I
> > *know* that this sounds like it's off-topic, but I don't think it is
> > for the following reason:
> > 
> > What do you think about having a Randa meeting (or similar) with focus
> > on finishing ports to KF5? Would that make sense?
> 
> If we had developers with free time for other projects, that time would
> be better spent on helping projects such as KDEPIM, rekonq, or Calligra.
> These are applications several of our users would switch to if they worked.

That would be a huge help.

> 
> > I'm thinking of apps like Kile or similar that while already ported,
> > still don't have a stable release. I'm pretty sure there are many
> > more.
> 
> As far as I know, Kile developer had to wait for the KF5 release of Okular.

That's what I knew as well.

> 
> > Such an initiative would also show that we don't simply drop old apps,
> > instead, we would show that we care to bring along as many apps as we
> > can.
> 
> But we also need someone caring for bugreports/regressions after the
> port. We have some applications ported (e.g. KTorrent) where the
> original developer no longer has time for bug handling, and now the
> regressions pile up.

Yes, afaik one of the reasons why it was not packaged in Debian yet 
(regressions).

-- 
Luigi