Request for adding new plugin for Dolphin

[Friedrich W. H. Kossebau]

Am Samstag, 10. November 2012, 21:03:15 schrieb Martin Andersen:
> Hi,
> 
> > > Of course review is a good thing, and Martin's review request did
> > > already get a couple of suggestions for improvements. It just wasn't
> > > clear to me if telling the wider world is required/makes sense in this
> > > case, or if having it reviewed by the people who work on the area is
> > > enough - I think that not everyone reading kde-core-devel wants to be
> > > informed about every little thing. But actually, either way is fine
> > > for me. However, seeing that the hard feature freeze is already in
> > > place, it might have to wait until KDE/4.10 branches are created
> > > anyway.
> 
> Thank you Frank and Fredrich for the review comments, this will improve the
> code. In a second round it could be nice with more rewievers, and I would
> like to inform kde-core-devel if this is appropriated.

Ideally there would be also testers of your code, because looking through the 
code is one thing, seeing it working is another :)

Dropping a note to kde-core-devel is recommended, both for entering kdereview 
and the final result of the review.
But to increase the chance to find someone who also uses Perforce and has a 
real interest in your plugin and thus could give it some serious testing with 
real-life scenarios (so you know it not just Works for You™), you could also 
blog about it on planetkde.org (or ask Frank or me to forward/host a blog post 
from you, which we happily will do).

At least I would have a better feeling to say "Please import to kdesdk" if 
there are a few reports of people who say "Great and useful stuff, works for 
me!"

> > I thought we had granted an feature freeze excemption for this (or that's
> > what
> > i understood from the previous mails in this thread).
> 
> I glad that you like my new plugin and wants this include in the release.
> I'm currently working on fixing a bug that makes this Plugin almost
> unusable in suntan situations as too many files are marked as not under
> version control.
> I will try to fix this in the coming days, but I will not be able to test
> the result before week 47. The fix will affect only one of the public
> functions (beginRetrieval()), however I will make it up to someone else to
> decide if this is still acceptable for KDE 4.10 or if the plugin will have
> to wait for 4.11.

While a good rule is "Release often and early" perhaps it might be a good idea 
to do this release often and early on your own in the early stages, outside of 
KDE SC/kdesdk. This is also recommended in the Lifecycle policy that Albert 
already referenced: "When you have made one of more releases and want to 
continue to develop it, the term 'playground' does no longer apply to you. 
That is the right time to move out of here.", see 
http://techbase.kde.org/Policies/Application_Lifecycle#Stage_2:_Stable

So given the timing and the issues you still see yourself I tend to propose to 
delay the inclusion into the kdesdk module for version 4.11.

Instead for now you should do a little drum-roll (e.g. by blogging about your 
plugin) and make small releases on your own and upload the tarballs to places 
like kde-apps.org where chances are high that people will look for it if they 
need it and also give you feedback.
You could use the category "Utilities/KDE Filemanager" (http://kde-
apps.org/index.php?xcontentmode=284) or whichever you might find more suited, 
people surely will use the search tools.

Doing releases on your own for the next half year also enables you to ignore 
restrictions on UI strings and features, so the feedback/patches you get from 
other users can be integrated the moment you have time to work on it. Then, 
after this small maturing process, everyone will feel better to have the 
Perforce plugin to be officially part of kdesdk.

Cheers
Friedrich