thinking ahead to 4.5: features or polish?

[Sean]

2009/11/3 Aaron J. Seigo <aseigo at kde.org>

> hi all ..
>
> i spent some time today thinking about challenges as well as opportunities
> that exist for our little Plasma baby who is growing up at an amazing pace.
>
> just to give you an idea of where we're at in terms of raw code production,
> here are some sloccount counts:
>
> kdelibs: 42,121
> runtime: 4,190
> workspace: 83,332
> addons: 55,792
>
> and we have so many little buds of progress elsewhere too:
>
> kdereview: 8,365
> media center components: 6,608
> plasmate: 4,518
> networkmanager: 27,029
> lionmail: 2,009
> mobile shell: 1,147
>
> we have been pounding out feature packed release after feature packed
> release
> and 4.4 will be no different in that regard.
>
> of course, it's not the only way we're growing. were also growing the user
> base as more of our desktop users come online and we start to reach out
> into
> new areas of the market such as netbooks and phones. we're also growing in
> *dum de dum dum* bug count. right now we have 745 open bug reports, not
> counting wishlist items. that's not as bad as it might sound; it's
> somewhere
> around one bug per 240 lines of code. but it's still substantial.
>
> as i mentioned at T3, plasma has developed a bit of a rhythm from release
> to
> release: January brings lots of new features (esp big ones) and some
> polish,
> July brings lots of polish and some new features (mostly smaller ones).
>
> 4.4 will certainly be a big feature release: netbook, remote plasmoids, new
> widget explorer, containment action plugins, lots more javascript in a
> number
> of places, nepomuk integration .... but what about 4.5?
>
> well, i'm seriously considering putting a moratorium on new features in 4.5
> and instead focusing on making it a polishing release.
>
> when we started out with KDE 4, one of our goals was to create an object of
> desire that people would pick over the "high end competition" such as
> MacOS.
> we achieved so much towards that goal, and now our biggest sore points are
> the
> little details.
>
> such a polishing release would consist of:
>
> * completing features that have made it thus far in a "mostly done" state
> but
> not quite finished
>
> * cataloging and improving families of (mis-)features like this:
> http://techbase.kde.org/Projects/Plasma/Plasmoid-Issues
>
> * a concentration on killing bugs right from the start of the release cycle
>
> * measuring memory and cpu performance and improving on both
>
> * tightening down our artwork and configuration UIs for consistency and
> extra
> sparkle
>
> if we go ahead with this, then our pre-release IRC meetings and T4 would be
> the where we would mark out our targets and decide how to tackle them.
>
> my concerns in such a move are:
>
> * it would destroy people's desire to work on plasma by making it more
> boring
> and difficult than it currently is with all the emphasis on great new
> things
>
> * people would ignore this set of goals and work on features anyways,
> splitting our community up and causing some tensions we don't have with our
> "wide open" policy
>
> * we wouldn't have enough to show at the end of it for our users to go
> "wow"
> over
>
> if we decide that this is something we would like to take on, we would need
> to
> make it fun and cool to do this hard work. i'd be sure to share bug count
> stats, performance measurements and track our goals on a regular basis to
> keep
> us moving. if new people came along with new features or we found we
> Really,
> Really(tm) needed something (e.g. if we got some kick ass bluetooth work
> donated), we'd have to be flexible enough to allow some of that to happen
> but
> disciplined enough not to get sidetracked ourselves.
>
> now, i'm still working through all of the implications of this and really
> haven't decided yet whether it's the best of ideas yet. and it would
> absolutely require that the overwhelming majority of our team here would
> want
> to see this through.
>
> so i put the question to you: what do you think? should we do this? should
> we
> not? why? why not?
>
> (and just to head off all the "oh yes, please do!" comments from the people
> on
> the list here who follow the threads but who aren't active contributors to
> some part of plasma: let's keep this discussion to those who are working on
> the code and artwork for now. thanks :)
>
>
>
I think this is a excellent idea for a number of reasons. It will shows
users that KDE4 is not just all about new features and more features and
more......
Plasma does seem have issues that get missed, such as Plasmoids acting nasty
when moving out of the panel or resizing. Knocking out these types of bugs
is important or just getting a number of Plasmoids acting properly and ship
these only.

I'm sure users will appreciate optimization since they bang on about
"polish" and speed more than features a lot of the time. Slow down a bit and
polish up for a release seems like a good idea to me.

I'd be willing to help debug and look for nasties, so count me in!

Regards

Sean W
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