[kde-promo] Releasing Deprecated modules and Tier 4 Definition

[John Layt]

On 17 March 2014 18:15, Kevin Ottens <ervin at kde.org> wrote:
> So let's pick the following cocktail: 1, 2 and 4.
>
> That means we immediately move khtml and kde4support out of KDE Frameworks (to
> be widely advertised) and into a KDE Porting Aids product (to be advertised
> only to existing KDE developers).
>
> Ben, I think you're going to hate me for that, but we learn as we progress...
> That means we're moving ASAP khtml and kde4support repositories out of the
> frameworks group of the projects tree into a new portingaids group.
>
> We'll also announce at beta time the second product, and that we aim for
> making only three releases out of it, coordinated with KDE Frameworks releases
> as to give people time to port away from it.
>
> Now, the last point... What else do we want to move from KDE Frameworks to KDE
> Porting Aids? Aleix and Aaron proposed the following content for KDE Porting
> Aids:
>  * kde4support (obvious);
>  * khtml (planned for a long time);
>  * kjs (because of khtml I gather);
>  * kjsembed (ditto);
>  * krunner (because of upcoming sprinter, and only one user anyway);
>  * kmediaplayer (unused AFAIK).
>
> I think that list makes sense. Is there anyone who couldn't sleep at night if
> those were in KDE Porting Aids?

+1 to this strategy, although some bikeshedding on the "portingaids"
name might be welcome :-)  Hmmm, nope, I'm drawing a blank...

I like the limit on kde4support, we only have to look to Qt3Support to
know that if the aids are left in place people will avoid porting away
from them until they absolutely have to.  I'm not sure we need to call
it a "product" though, perhaps just saying a special category of
Frameworks providing transitional support for a limited period of time
for apps migrating from kdelibs4 to KF5 would be enough.  Hey, how
about KDE Transitional Frameworks? :-)

The important part is to have the clear definitions of what things
mean and what our plans are.  We made a horrible mistake in Qt5 of
labelling things like QWidgets as "Done" as people just didn't
understand what we meant and assumed the worst, and we all know the PR
disaster that was.

Cheers!

John.