Applications 17.12 as LTS release?

[David Faure]

On lundi 31 juillet 2017 14:42:34 CEST Luca Beltrame wrote:
> Il giorno Mon, 31 Jul 2017 12:19:48 +0200
> 
> Elvis Angelaccio <elvis.angelaccio at kde.org> ha scritto:
> > an LTS release. What would be needed from a practical point of view?
> > (changes to release/i18n scripts, etc.?)
> 
> One potential "problematic" point I can see is having to deal with 3
> branches (master, latest, LTS).
> 
> > * New openSUSE and Ubuntu LTS releases due next year.
> 
> With my distro hat on, it would be a *huge* +1. It would make matters a
> lot better for the next openSUSE release.

I don't think LTS releases are always good for distros.

For instance, I just installed OpenSuSE Leap 42.3, and the very bad surprise 
is the state of printing in KMail (which opens a webbrowser for printing, with 
inconvenience and bugs on top). Why? Because while KMail is recent (17.04.2), 
the Qt version in that release is Qt 5.6.2. For no good reason IMHO, just 
because it was stamped LTS.

Before we had LTS Qt releases, this distro (who *just* came out!) would for 
sure have been using Qt 5.8 instead, leading to a much better user experience 
with KMail (who didn't just need bugfixes, but also new API to be able to fix 
printing and focus stealing and many other issues in WebEngine).

So I'm not a big fan of Long Term Suckiness -- but OK, my argument is mostly a 
problem for LTS for libraries.
I don't object to a KDE Applications LTS, but please please make sure to use a 
recent enough Qt version under that, and not sticking with the same old and 
insufficient Qt version for several years.

-- 
David Faure, faure at kde.org, http://www.davidfaure.fr
Working on KDE Frameworks 5