Call for testing KF6-based version of RKWard

[Thomas Friedrichsmeier]

Hi!

Here's a short update on current progress towards a KF6 (aka KDE 6)
based release of RKWard, and a call to start testing.

As a bit of background, the transition from KF5 to KF6 is complicated
by the fact, that some Linux distributions do not ship KF6 libraries,
yet, and may not have them in their stable releases for a long time,
while other distributions are already shipping some of our dependencies
(importantly, kate) in a KF6-only version. To address this, I worked on
getting out AppImage builds to a state that is (as far a I know) ready
for productive use. Importantly, the AppImages can now be used with a
full featured R installation on the host system.

Of course, we plan on having Ubuntu daily builds, again, too, once
backported KF6-libraries are available.

AppImage packages - as well as Windows and Mac builds - are available
from https://cdn.kde.org/ci-builds/education/rkward/master/ . Note that
these packages are generated, automatically, straight from the
development sources, and individual builds have not undergone human
testing. That said, no major problems are currently expected on Linux
and Windows, and we'll need your help to detect an address remaining
issues!

Unfortunately, on MacOS, the situation is currently more dire. While
packages exist, these have not been tested at all. Since a number of
large changes have been done to platform-dependent code regarding the
startup procedure, there is a fairly high probability that these build
will quite simply fail to start at all (but no major issues are
expected once that difficulty is overcome). The problem is quite simply
that we do not have the hardware for testing and fixing these builds.

*If you own a Mac, we want your help!* The first step will be to
download and (try to) run the .dmg, and report, what you see. Based on
that, and depending on how much time you're will to invest, I'll be
going to ask you for more info for diagnostics. Thanks!

Regards
Thomas
-------------- next part --------------
A non-text attachment was scrubbed...
Name: not available
Type: application/pgp-signature
Size: 833 bytes
Desc: OpenPGP digital signature
URL: <http://mail.kde.org/pipermail/rkward-devel/attachments/20240613/f6cd26cd/attachment.sig>