Bits from the Qt/KDE team

Hi folks,

In December of 2007, members of the Qt/KDE team gathered in Cáceres, Spain for a meeting sponsored by the Government of Extremadura.

In the following weeks, we have been working towards the goals set at that meeting, some of which have since been slightly altered.

 Plans for KDE 3

We will release Lenny with KDE 3.

The current KDE version in unstable is 3.5.8, which will shortly migrate to testing. 3.5.9 does not yet have a release date, but it will be decided soon. Therefore, Lenny will most likely be released with a version of 3.5.9 that includes patches for the most important fixes from the upstream KDE 4 branch. Additionally, the kdepim-enterprise branch is being merged with the current kdepim, which will bring some features and bugfixes, most importantly to KMail. Otherwise, the only major changes to our current KDE 3 packaging are some re-working of the meta-packages and the removal of meta-kde-extras. More info about this can be found on our webpage. [0][1]

Furthermore, I would like highlight that in the last year, we have attempted to reduce the number of bugs filed against KDE packages (see graph [2]), but it is difficult to keep the bug count low. Since some bugs fixed in KDE 4 remain in KDE 3, we will be closing them as fixed in the KDE 4.0.0 using BTS's version tracking, and hopefully we will manage to backport some of these fixes (the most important ones) to KDE 3.5.X.

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However, we will close bugs filed against applications declared dead by upstream, such as aRts.

 Plans for KDE 4

We will be shipping KDE 4.0 development platform with Lenny.

As you may know, KDE 4.0.0 is being released on the 11th of January (tomorrow!).
We have been working very hard to get some nice KDE packages into Debian, and you can presently find KDE 4.0.0 packages in experimental.

Instructions of how to install KDE 4 from experimental are at our website. [0]

The primary reason against shipping KDE 4.0 with Lenny is that this release lacks many applications that would make KDE 4 a complete desktop, such as KMail, and still requires a lot of overall polishing, making it unsuitable for most users. KDE 4.1 is expected to fix most of these shortcomings, but the release date has not yet been finalised. The KDE developers are currently discussing the release schedules for KDE 4.0.x and KDE 4.1. It appears that they are planning to do monthly updates for KDE 4.0, and that KDE 4.1 will not be released before late July, making it impossible to include within the current Debian release schedule.

For Lenny, we will instead be shipping the "KDE 4 development platform", consisting of kdelibs, kdepimlibs, kdebase-runtime, and possibly kdebindings. We are planning to upload the 4.0.0 release to experimental, and probably next week, barring any problems, push these 3 packages into unstable. These packages are co-installable with the current KDE 3 version, allowing users to run KDE 4 apps, such as the new Okular document viewer, in a KDE 3 desktop.

There are still some issues that need to be resolved, such as migration of configuration files, since we have patched KDE 4 to store its settings in ~/.kde4 instead of ~/.kde .

Do you need more help?

In addition to our free technical library, Pantek provides professional IT services to companies who utilize Open Source software: Learn more about Pantek's Technical Support offerings Place an order for 24/7/365 Technical Support here Learn more about Pantek, who we are, and what we do Chat with a Live Operator Related lists.debian.org Links debian-announce debian-apache debian-arm-changes debian-beowulf debian-boot debian-cd debian-cd-vendors debian-changes debian-changes-digest debian-isp debian-kde debian-laptop debian-mirrors-announce debian-news debian-security debian-security-announce debian-testing debian-user debian-user-digest Request more information about Pantek

KDE 4 will be easily installable using the upcoming meta-packages. See our website for more information. [0][3]

Finally, we are publishing all the relevant information on our website [0] with the dual goals of keeping our users informed, and providing an easy path for new contributors to join the team. But some information is still work in progress :)

Ana,
on behalf of the Qt/KDE team.

P.S.: Anyway, you never know what the future will bring, we will review our decisitions with respect shipping KDE 4 in Lenny in a few months.

[0] http://pkg-kde.alioth.debian.org/
[1] http://pkg-kde.alioth.debian.org/metapackages-kde3.html
[2] http://users.alioth.debian.org/~pusling-guest/pkg-kde-buggraphs/_ALL_-year.png
[3] http://pkg-kde.alioth.debian.org/metapackages-kde4.html

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