When to branch off 2.9 (was: Re: 2.8.7 and 2.9 release plan)

[Friedrich W. H. Kossebau]

Am Donnerstag, 20. November 2014, 17:34:59 schrieb Cyrille Berger:
> Hi,
> 
> I have updated the wiki page with tentative schedules for 2.8.7 and 2.9:
> 
> https://community.kde.org/Calligra/Schedules/2.9/Release_Plan
> https://community.kde.org/Calligra/Schedules/2.8/Release_Plan

Question: does it makes sense to branch off calligra/2.9 already for Beta 1?

I propose to actually branch off 2.9 only on the actual release, perhaps even 
on the last patch release 2.9.x right before the start of the Qt5 port. And 
spent all time till the port on polishing 2.9.

Reasoning:

The very next thing after 2.9 to happen on master is the port to Qt5. Which is 
currently planned to happen like this:
"
In early January, we'll lock down the repo, send everyone on vacation while 
the porting scripts run. When every script has ran, and everything builds 
again, we'll start properly porting Calligra
"
	from https://dot.kde.org/2014/07/27/2014-calligra-sprint-deventer

Adding new stuff to master that possibly is only half done in the time window 
between 2.9 branch and the port might only add trouble to the port, as it 
might not be clear if errors are due to the port or because the feature was 
broken before.

There are a lot of new things in 2.9, which might need some more polishing 
anyway. Having master and 2.9 on the same branch prevents any backward/forward 
porting needs.

Having master being 2.9 also means more dogfooding of 2.9 by the developers.

Is anyone having/planning any feature branches/patches to merge after the 
release of 2.9 and before the porting of Qt5 happens?

I am not sure that would makes much sense, instead everyone should be invited 
to spent those weeks on first polishing 2.9 some more and then getting the 
port to Qt5/KF5 done as quickly and well as possible. Thankfully Calligra is 
very modular, so multiple people can work in parallel, once the initial 
script-based porting has been done.

(I have a patch drafted to support the port temporarily in the product system, 
where all unported products will be tagged by "UNPORTED" and thus properly 
disabled in the build, no need to uncomment lots of things in CMakeLists.txt 
files, e.g. 
	calligra_define_product(LIB_MSO "libmso"  UNPORTED REQUIRES LIB_CALLIGRA)
upcoming in reviewboard in the next days to be available when needed)

I see that for Krita there is at least one feature planned for 3.0, next to 
the port: "Parallel: work on the animation plugin"
	from https://forum.kde.org/viewtopic.php?f=137&t=123658&hilit=2014+roadmap
That would happen in a branch anyway, so no need for branching off 2.9 early.

So, anyone opposing delaying the branching until the port will start?

Cheers
Friedrich