Issue with .6 bugfix releases

[Martin Riethmayer]

Hi all,

tosky raised an issue on the plasma-dev matrix channel:

Starting with Plasma 6.3, it is/was planned to have one extra bugfix 
release (e.g. 6.3.6, 6.4.6 etc.), discussed at the Plasma Sprint (AFAIK) 
[1].

The scheduling of the .6-releases, however, is currently planned to be 
after the branching of the next version, e.g. 6.3.6 is scheduled to be 
on 2025-07-08, which is after the branching of 6.4 (which has happened 
already on 2025-05-15).

This will be an issue for translations, as there currently is no 
"support for more than one stable branch at a time right now, and 
reenabling the infrastructure used for LTS just for one release seems 
overkill." (tosky, on Matrix).

This e-mail is meant to kick off a discussion on how to proceed, a 
couple of options have been mentioned on Matrix:

1.) Do a "no-string-changed-bugix" release for .6
Pro:
- should not have any issue with extra branching
- consistent with released schedule (not super important, probably)
Con:
- Hard to enforce / communicate
- bound to fail sooner or later
- Problematic for CI

2.) Use LTS infrastructure for .6 releases
Pro:
- already in place
Con:
- quite some overhead / struggle just for one point release
- Problematic for CI

3.) Don't do .6 releases
Pro:
- no issues with translation branches
Con:
- some distributions may have already started work for 6.3.6 (?)
- confusing for people closely following the wiki [2] (not super 
important, but maybe worth some explanation on that page?)

Of course, other options might be possible and/or better.

Best regards

Martin

P.S. I'm just the guy writing stuff on the wiki, not doing any of the 
heavy lifting!

[1] https://community.kde.org/Sprints/Plasma/2025/Topics/Plasma_LTS_plans
[2] https://community.kde.org/Schedules/Plasma_6