Fwd: KDE Frameworks Release Cycle

[Scott Kitterman]

On May 20, 2014 10:41:04 AM EDT, Frank Reininghaus <frank78ac at googlemail.com> wrote:
>Hi,
>
>2014-05-20 13:19 GMT+02:00 Scott Kitterman:
>> We've pushed nearly every point release to end users throughout the
>KDE4 cycle. I use them myself. Your characterization of the KDE4 point
>releases doesn't match my experience.
>
>here is just one recent example, where someone pushed a commit to the
>KDE/4.13 which seemed to work fine for him:
>
>https://git.reviewboard.kde.org/r/117044/
>
>The next ones to test the patch were the users who upgraded from KDE
>SC 4.13.0 to 4.13.1, and then noticed this regression:
>
>https://bugs.kde.org/show_bug.cgi?id=334776
>
>I know that such things do not happen in every bug fix update, of
>course. Most of the time, they do improve the user experience
>considerably, but there is always the risk that things turn out pretty
>badly for some users. Nevertheless, I still appreciate the possibility
>to release regular bug fix updates, and I am very grateful that the
>packagers invest a large amount of time each month to help with that!
>
>
>Please let us all acknowledge and appreciate that everyone here tries
>to provide a great KDE experience to users, and possibly make it even
>better in the future.
>
>* Packagers appreciate the possibility to ship monthly bug fix updates
>to users, and I guess that most of us understand and appreciate that.
>On the other hand, they cannot ship updates that contain anything but
>bug fixes - I think that we just have to acknowledge that this is due
>to distro policies that will not be changed for KDE Frameworks.
>
>* Frameworks developers would like to provide regular updates to users
>which are tested well (in order to prevent annoying regressions which
>ruin the user experience, and possibly, also KDE's reputation).
>
>It has become obvious that the initial 1-month release cycle plan
>might not work out fully as expected due to distro policies which will
>not change. But in any case, even if a distro would not update the KF5
>version that it shipped with initially at all, then at least we would
>prevent that code which has seen little to no testing appears on
>user's machines, and this is a good thing. And if we can find ways to
>improve that, then it's even better.

And please note that the regression was found in our pre-release (to end users) testing process and when all Kubuntu users get 4.13.1 they won't have that issue. 

This is an example of of testing process at work. 

Scott K