Plasma Workspaces 4.11: the last feature release in the 4.x series for kde-workspace

[Andriy Rysin]

If the feature freeze for 4.11 is May 22 and there is no more feature
releases for branch 4.x, where all those features from GSoC go? I don't
think students should work on version 5 yet...
On May 1, 2013 9:16 AM, "Aaron J. Seigo" <aseigo at kde.org> wrote:

> **
>
> Hello everyone,
>
>
>
> tl;dr -> 4.11 will be the last feature release of kde-workspace. Plasma
> Workspaces will be feature frozen and we are committing to 2 years of
> maintenance releases of 4.11. The next feature release of kde-workspace
> will be Plasma Workspaces 2, based on Qt5.
>
>
>
> This does not impact kdelibs, kde-runtime or any KDE application
> development.
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
> As you probably know, a number of the Plasma developers got together a
> couple of weeks back for a developer sprint, Tokamak 6, that focused on a
> Qt5 / Frameworks 5 version of Plasma Workspaces.
>
>
>
> We have already made significant progress in this effort: we have a
> functioning libplasma2, QML2 versions of Plasma Components and an alpha
> version of a new shell loader that will end up replacing the
> plasma-desktop, plasma-netbook and plasma-device binaries. At the
> development sprint we made further progress, some of which you can read
> about here:
>
>
>
>
> http://aseigo.blogspot.com/2013/04/tokamak-6-plasma-workspaces-2-milestone.html
>
>
>
> In planning a roadmap for Plasma Workspaces 2, we realized that we have
> arrived at a point in development where, in order to move forward, we need
> to start porting the contents of kde-workspace. In fact, some components in
> kde-workspace already have been!
>
>
>
> KWin needs to complete the shift to Qt5, and this will not be possible to
> do while maintaining a compatible Qt4 version. The changes necessary have
> been made as minimal as possible thanks to work done in the last few 4.x
> dev cycles, but the remaining changes will be significant.
>
>
>
> Due to the adoption of QML2 and the new unified shell binary significant
> changes to the desktop code base will occur that will cause a similar
> significant divergence.
>
>
>
> Other components will be retired outright, such as KDM.
>
>
>
> Finally, we don't want to make our users and 3rd party developers wait
> overly long for Plasma Workspaces 2. We want to have as little disruption
> to the release regularity as possible while still delivering a high quality
> product on first release. This means we need to start sooner rather than
> later.
>
>
>
> To achieve our goals, we have decided to put the 4.x version of Plasma
> Workspaces into maintenance mode. After 4.11, all feature development will
> happen in the Qt5-based codebase. We will continue to roll out bug fix,
> translation and stabilization releases of 4.11 during this time in sync
> with the KDE SC process for a minimum of 2 years.
>
>
>
> The 4.11.x versions of Plasma Workspaces should be especially appropriate
> for use in long term maintenance/support releases of operating systems that
> package Plasma.
>
>
>
> For Plasma Workspaces 2, our goal is to have a user ready release in Q2
> 2013. This release will not necessarily be tied to the release schedule of
> Frameworks 5, nor does it impact in any way application development which
> should continue developing again the 4.x kdelibs until such time as we have
> a working release of Frameworks 5.
>
>
>
> This has been discussed within the broader Plasma community (inc focus
> areas such as Solid) as well as on the release-team mailing list.
> Additional feedback is welcome and we will do our best to address any
> questions that you may have.
>
>
>
> Cheers, and happy hacking :)
>
>
>
> --
>
> Aaron J. Seigo
>
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