Review Request 109906: Make plasma-desktop and krunner use KDE_VERSION_STRING instead of some never changing version.

Mon Apr 8 04:48:47 UTC 2013

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http://git.reviewboard.kde.org/r/109906/
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Review request for Plasma and Aaron J. Seigo.

Description
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What the patch does is trivial. So I will just explain why the change is *necessary* and *good*.

Necessary: 

1. plasma-desktop has stayed in version "0.4" for 4 years, and krunner is worse, staying in its initial version "0.1" for 6 years. So practically, those two versions are useless. They can't be used to identify and differentiate plasma-desktop from KDE SC 4.2.x and that from 4.10.x, although we all see they are quite different.

    So this is self explanation: why use a dead version which can't identify the application. Isn't that the basic functionality of version ?

2. Even if they maintain and update their own versions actively as they should have , it is still not as useful as the version currently used for identifying  KDE SC (KDE_VERSION_STRING), because they are intended to be invisible to users. I really doubt how many users know plasma-desktop is the binary name for their desktop and krunner is a separate binary/process instead of part of the desktop shell. And plasma-desktop and krunner don't expose their versions in the UI, so how should average users get to know the exact version of plasma-desktop and krunner ? They don't. They just use 4.10.2 as version when reporting bugs and discussing problems.

3. You know DrKonqi *usually* automatically fills the "Version" field (not talking about the version information embedded in the comment ) with the right version when creating crash reports. Well, that doesn't work for plasma-desktop and krunner[1]. All plasma-desktop and krunner crash reports are filled with the useless "unspecified" version, although DrKonqi clearly knows their versions. Why? Because the version of plasma-desktop is "0.4", while the versions used in the bug tracker are 4.9.5, 4.10.2, etc( no surprise, a never changing "0.4" version is useless in practice ). They simply don't match. DrKonqi is (still) stupid. It doesn't know how to map version "0.4" to "4.10.2" for application A, and map version "0.1" to "4.10.2" for application B, etc.

That is big loss of valuable information, for every one who treats and uses bugs.kde.org in a serious and heavy way. It forces them to fill those information manually, wasting precious time.

Good :

bugs.kde.org always receives too many reports, and DrKonqi contributes quite a lot. Especially, DrKonqi does not prevent user using outdated versions(say kde 4.4.x) from creating crash reports. That also means (great) waste of time, for both users that spend time in creating useless reports and developers that spend time in explaining and closing those reports.

Now there is (half) good news[2]. bugs.kde.org, after upgrading to bugzilla 4.2.5 a few days ago, now rejects crash reports from disabled versions. That means we will never receives crash report from 4.8.x from now on, after disabling all versions corresponding to 4.8.x. That works for kwin, okula, konsole, amarok and every application which maintains its versions actively and properly, in both the code and bugs.kde.org. 

Again, for plasma-desktop and krunner, it doesn't work, because the version doesn't match between application code and bugs.kde.org. The plasma product doesn't have the "0.4" version, and even if it has, it can not be disabled, because disabling "0.4" version means plasma crashes from all KDE versions will be rejected, since they all have the same "0.4" version.             

Too bad for plasma and krunner, because it is not that they are rock solid and crash free. Actually, plasma takes the lead[3] in receiving crash reports, which means it is the biggest victim of receiving useless reports from outdated versions.

To sum up, this little change will bring great benefit. The loss, well, might be that when kdelibs and  workspace are no longer released together (if that ever happens) then it needs to use another version scheme. But what is the point and benefit of a never changing version ?

I plan to make the change on the 4.10 branch, since this should really be fixed/improved ASAP.

[1] https://bugs.kde.org/buglist.cgi?list_id=580246&bug_severity=crash&query_format=advanced&version=unspecified&product=plasma&limit=0 

[2] https://bugs.kde.org/show_bug.cgi?id=315073#c3

[3] https://bugs.kde.org/report.cgi?x_axis_field=&y_axis_field=product&z_axis_field=&query_format=report-table&short_desc_type=allwordssubstr&short_desc=&longdesc_type=allwordssubstr&longdesc=&bug_file_loc_type=allwordssubstr&bug_file_loc=&keywords_type=allwords&keywords=&bug_id=&bug_id_type=anyexact&votes=&votes_type=greaterthaneq&bug_severity=crash&emailassigned_to1=1&emailtype1=substring&email1=&emailassigned_to2=1&emailreporter2=1&emailcc2=1&emailtype2=substring&email2=&emailtype3=substring&email3=&chfieldvalue=&chfieldfrom=2008-01-01&chfieldto=Now&j_top=AND&f1=noop&o1=noop&v1=&format=table&action=wrap

Diffs
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  krunner/main.cpp c3dd560 
  plasma/desktop/shell/main.cpp 225eec2 

Diff: http://git.reviewboard.kde.org/r/109906/diff/

Testing
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Thanks,

Jekyll Wu

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