KDE Frameworks & Plasma 5.8 LTS

[Dominik Haumann]

On Mon, Oct 24, 2016 at 1:47 PM, Ivan Čukić <ivan.cukic at kde.org> wrote:
>> 2. We provide KF 5.26.1
>
> This would mean that we should also provide 5.27.1 (and .2, .3) for the
> distros that use KF 5.27 with the LTS release.

I don't think so: As I understand, the distros using KF 5.27 with
Plasma 5.8 LTS plan to continuously update, which is good. So no need
for additional minor releases.

> I'd love to have distros to **properly update KF** during the 5.8 LTS life,
> but if we can not get them to do so, I agree that we need to find an
> alternative.
> [...]

Let's try to get some facts:
1. we only unit test the latest KF on build.kde.org.
2. we typically develop and test against latest KF, so if we patch KF
5.26, it is likely not well / broadly tested.
3. given limited resources / man-power, maintaining additional KF
releases is not easy
4. With a LTS version we'd communicate our commitment to a
well-maintained KF version.

Given these constraints, having a stable KF 5.26 would mean to only
put critical patches into this branch.

It indeed would be much better to convince the distributions to update
continuously and work with KDE upstream. This seems to be the case for
some distributions, which is nice. However, if distributions decide
(for whatever reason) to go with KF 5.26, then we need to work with
them.

Maybe the most convenient way would be to let the distributions commit
the patches into the KF 5.26 branch, i.e. the distributions take over
part of the maintainership.

Greetings
Dominik