Plasma 5.24 Kickoff Notes

[Jonathan Riddell]

Present: David Edmundson, Aleix, Arjen, Nate, Bshah, Neal Gompa, David
Redondo, Carl Schwan, Nicolas Fella, Andy Betts, Marco Martin, Vlad
Zahorodnii

= Review Plasma 5.23 =

5.23 went well

Soft feature freeze went well

A few minor regressions with esoteric display and hardware setups, we need
more QA and testing from people with weird setups.

Keep the beta test day, remember it closer to the time.

Announcement text was a bit short

Seeing how to thank the right people would be a useful thing to have.

TODO Jonathan: ask promo video team to try to include VDG and others as
necessary, or just be more general.

 question was asked: How to give credit to contributors?
     currently this is based on git commits logs but it skips commentors
and designers and graphists
     We could add people' names to the git commit in a keyword
"authored-by:" "inspired-by"
     This could be done manualy or extracted by scripts that would query
git-lab and phabricator
     But this is unlikely, since it represents quite some work

= Plasma 5.18 LTS release schedule =

No requests for it. Do a release just incase anyone cares.  Now move into
maintainance mode of move on demand.

= Plasma 5.24 etc release schedule =

5.24 unlikely to be the final plasma 5 release.  Unknown when Framework 6
will be ready to develop against.  We can decide to make a release LTS part
way through schedule.

Use the schedule as currently on wiki for 2022 until KF6 becomes good to
develop against and we decide to switch, at which point declare an LTS and
switch.

= Plasma 6 =

Mostly boring changes and removing old features rather than adding new
features or transforming Plasma.

Nate suggests to overhaul theming system(s) as a change which needs a major
new release and is important to users.

= Workboards =

We have decided to move workboards to gitlab issue boards.  Make a dummy
project?  WIll discuss with sysadmin.
TODO Jonathan to discuss with sysadmins and move work items over

= Plasma 5.24 Qt and KF5 deps =

Qt 5.15.2 (raised from 5.15.0) this includes some new API for strings.
We recommend distros to use KDE's Qt Patch Collection.
KF5 5.90
TODO Jonathan to e-mail distros

= VDG summary =

Nicolo wants to rework panels code
he wants to make panels floating if theme allows and

Breeze redesign is mostly finished

GTK theme did not get updated, 5.24 work.  A useful person has left.  GTK 4
is reverting to GTK2 style theme engine libraries but this time apps are
linking directly.  Consider a shim library that exposes libawaida API for
plasma.  Needs some input from the GTK devs.

= SDDM and Fingerprint Reader Work =

KCM patch in good state
kscreenlocker
sddm patch is stuck partly to low review bandwidth

break kscreenlocker API by renaming the relevant QML file.

Let's get started!

Consider making it easier to auto login and lock without a display manager
viewed as done in plasma mobile, this is what most users want anyway.

Make sure it works with all 4 code paths.

TODO David to make a ticket

= Some feedback from Plasma Mobile =

Workboard has a tag for 5.24.
System dialog implementation looks bad on mobile and arguably desktop, new
design in progress.

https://invent.kde.org/teams/plasma-mobile/issues/-/issues?label_name%5B%5D=5.24

Drkonqi is being changed to work as a crash handler for other applications.
Maybe desktop distros want to do something similar.

There is a hardware partner working on a touch first device with Plasma, it
would be great if 5.24 was good with touch first.  Ask Aleix for details.

TODO Jonathan to add this item as as standing item

= Wayland =

Getting better.  Going to be super.  Still work in progress.

NVidia might work soonish, there is progress.

Random dialog location needs changes to protocol, big item for Aleix for
5.24.

TODO Aleix to try to define what Primary Screen means to Plasma

TODO NVidia driver switching needs investigation again, do distros ship
appstream data or use all distro specific methods?  Can it be done through
Discover or Calamares?
 * appstreamcli search nvidia doesn't show anything useful on my system

= Sprint =

Virtual Sprint in first half of year and an in-person sprint after
frameworks sprint?

TODO Jonathan review for in-person in February

TODO Jonathan to make doodle poll for weekend virtual sprint before end of
2021
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