Versioning of Frameworks

[David Faure]

On Sunday 10 May 2015 12:36:53 Christian Mollekopf wrote:
> * I'd consider Qt to be a lower level library. Qt mostly provides
> fundamentals just like libc or the STL,
> and it's therefore okay for me to just work with what I have available.

I hope you can understand that the decision on how Qt (on one side) and KDE 
Frameworks (on the other side) should be released, does not only depend on the 
way *you* consider Qt and KF5. Other people have a different view on both 
(e.g. Qt developers do work on Qt, while app developers might treat KF5 as 
something "fundamental where they just work with what they have available).
You want to draw a line somewhere, while others draw it elsewhere, and yet we 
have to make decisions that work for everyone, not just for you.

> Qt does include a *lot* of stuff though,
> which I think Qt would also benefit from truly splitting up libraries.

Qt *is* splitted. It's just that the splitted libs are released together.

> Frameworks for me is an umbrella for various libraries, and not a single
> library. If it were a single library
> it would be an "everything and the kitchen sink" library, which I really
> don't think is something we should
> be aiming for. 

One could say the same about Qt, but this argument won't lead us anywhere so 
let's skip that.

> So for me each framework is an individual library, and
> should be treated as such,
> because I do want to work on the respective framework instead of running
> in my own circles in wherever I use the framework.
> I therefore need to be able to use the results of that work on all my
> target platforms, otherwise working
> on the framework is just having me implement the same thing twice.

Making it possible for people to work on frameworks and then use the result in 
their applications quickly is exactly the reason why we have a monthly release 
cycle (unlike Qt). You can implement stuff in KF5 and use it the month that 
follows in the layers above. This is orthogonal to the discussion on version 
numbering, i.e. I definitely don't see this as an argument in favour of 
version hell.

-- 
David Faure, faure at kde.org, http://www.davidfaure.fr
Working on KDE Frameworks 5