Delaying KDE 4.1 Alpha 1 ?

[Aaron J. Seigo]

On Sunday 20 April 2008, Matt Rogers wrote:
> On Sunday 20 April 2008 06:09:22 Tom Albers wrote:
> > Hi Guys,
> >
> > On the agenda for this week is the tagging of Alpha 1. As I understand
> > from IRC the fallout from the plasma hacking event is pretty big and the
> > current state is less than what we want to display to our alpha testing
> > user base.

indeed. i hope to have most of the fallout under control by end of week, but 
one never knows. it could take longer, it could also go really quickly. the 
taskbar and system tray were working great, but currently .. aren't.

> > I know KDE is /a lot/ more than plasma, but I feel the overall perception
> > of KDE in reviews and perception of users is largely based on Plasma. I

one hopes an alpha won't get reviews, per say. but it is true that plasma 
needs to be at least basically usable for the alpha to be testable by most 
people (as most people won't mix/match their kde4 testing installs).

> Delaying Alpha 1 is not the way to go, IMHO. We need to push Alpha 1 out
> and send the signals to everybody that it's time to get in to release mode.

well, except that shipping plasma in the current state is a bit silly, even if 
it is an alpha. most of the applets outside of kdebase are not buildable, 
several of the applets in kdebase are broken (apparently we have issues with 
QGraphicsProxyWidget and system tray). there's really no way people will use 
it at all in its current state.

i do agree that the alpha shouldn't be delayed, however, for everyone else's 
sake.

personally, i'd recommend shipping alpha1 with plasma from, say, april 10th.

that way the alpha isn't delayed for the rest of the code base and the plasma 
devs can get the code base under control. i'm back to hacking tomorrow and 
will be diving immediately into systray and taskbar. those could end up being 
one-day fixes, in which case the alpha tagging could go ahead on the 22nd.

but a contingency for a plasma (or even workspace as a whole if that's easier? 
crappy for the kwin guys though =/ ) from the 10th is probably smart.

and apologies for needing the weekend off around release time; after the 
sprint, board meetings and then adjusting 8 time zones (plus the laundry, 
groceries, etc that come with being back) i just needed a couple days.

-- 
Aaron J. Seigo
humru othro a kohnu se
GPG Fingerprint: 8B8B 2209 0C6F 7C47 B1EA  EE75 D6B7 2EB1 A7F1 DB43

KDE core developer sponsored by Trolltech
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