[rkward-devel] Development plans

[Stefan Rödiger]

Am Sonntag, 7. Oktober 2007 16:08:14 schrieb Thomas Friedrichsmeier:
> Hi all,
>
> this mail is to give a very rough outline of what is about to happen next
> in RKWard development. The big issue, here, is KDE4 migration. KDE4 is
> scheduled to release in December, and while I guess that date may easily
> slip another few weeks, time has come to start worrying about porting.
>
> No matter what, transition to KDE4 will be painful. For one thing, porting
> looks like a pretty huge task. For another, it will probably take a long
> time for many distributions to make the switch to KDE4, so many users (and
> developers) will be stuck with KDE3 for some time to come. On the other
> hand, the KDE4 will offer a number of wonderful opportunities for
> improvements in RKWard, including but not limited to a windows port.
>

I would like to know if there is some interrest of Windows developers you 
maybe have heard of from another list or via private mail? Interestingly (and 
sadly at the same time) R has a huger user base on Windows and thus RKWard 
would have too.
Moreover what will you do with all the problems related to X? For example the 
KDE-developers face a similar situation when it comes to KWin or certain 
parts of plasma.

> What I plan to do is to focus on the KDE4 port from now on. That is, I will
> try to set up a KDE4 development environment
> (http://techbase.kde.org/Getting_Started/Set_up_KDE_4_for_development),
> open a new branch in SVN, and try to get the basic things working. No idea,
> how long this will take, but I'd like to encourage you to set up a KDE4
> environment, soon, as well.

I certainly will with some guidance.

>
> Future development will be mostly for KDE4, only. Version 0.5.0 will be the
> first to be a native KDE4 application. However, I expect to produce at
> least a bugfix release for KDE3 some time before or after 0.5.0. Maybe some
> changes in plugins will also be released for KDE3, but not much else will
> happen for KDE3 versions any more. The KDE3 version will be called 0.4.9
> (and - if needed - 0.4.10 after that), even if it might be released after
> 0.5.0 (time will tell).
>

Just for planning. When is the next (bug fix) release planned (I guess 
December unless somebody discovers serve issues)?

> For the time being, you will not need to make any adjustments. However,
> note that not much further development will happen on KDE3 versions, and
> please be prepared to set up a KDE4 system relatively soon. I'll keep you
> up-to-date on the progress towards KDE4 migration.
>
> Regards
> Thomas

Stefan