"After discussing the amount of changes that have gone into the 4.5 branch post-RC3, the release team has decided to wait another couple of days for things to settle down and to re-tag the 4.5.0 release from branch in a bit more than an hour, at 1600 UTC. We'll push the further schedule for the 4.5 series for 1 week as well. The current plan for 4.6.x is not affected.
There was a number of last-minute changes introduced we didn't feel completely comfortable shipping. Also, delaying the release a bit gives us the chance to have zero-day packages available for more OSen than we'd have with only about 24h head-time for packagers, and will likely lead to better and more complete material for the press to be available and seeded early."
So we're delayed by a week, but the result will be a better 4.5.0 release for everyone. This means that important fixes for issues with Dolphin, Nepomuk and Plasma Desktop that did not make the original deadline will now be a part of 4.5.0. Some of these fix crashes, such as a problem in Dolphin with showing metadata, and some are more technical packaging issues such as a library from kdebase/apps/ whose .so version wasn't bumped up even though it broke binary compatibility.
As noted in the email, the 4.6 release schedule is not affected by this as we already branched off for 4.6 development a few weeks ago and those efforts have already been moving forward at a good pace.
Kudos to those who worked on the last-minute fixes, as it shows commitment to quality, and to the release team for being able to make tough decisions in a responsible manner and communicate them clearly.
Here's looking to a great 4.5.0!
17 comments:
So I should change the image countdowns to expire on the 14th?
Gnome delays Gnome3 6 months and KDE KDE4 one week.
Might that be in indicator for KDE4s maturity? Like KDE4 is now 26 times more mature than Gnome3 :)
(I am just kiddin')
well... I'm a little sad, but is a little cost for more quality and stability.
@Tom nope, kde4.0 was delayed for a long time too, do not use to spread FUD agains the other DE. remember that the change of number '3' means that they are passing by something similar that kde 4 passed when moved out from qt 3 ( except that they are not doing they whole DE again as we did... )
Some devs on #gentoo-kde said that the main portage tree would be waiting for 4.5.1 because 4.5 does not correctly migrate certain plasma settings, which cause bad bugs unless you delete your plasmarc. I don't know how true this is or the accuracy of such claims, but if this is vaguely familiar to you, any chance that the fixes for it will go into 4.5.0 with the delay?
@Dion Moult: "looks that way, yes"
@Jason: unless those devs give us some "how to reproduce" steps or patches to apply, i don't see how 4.5.1 will be better? is there a BR# on bugs.kde.org for this?
I think this is the right step. 8 would even go further and say, that our (as in "the linux desktop") biggest problem is stability.
Even in official opensuse 11.3 packages I get the occasional crash.
My experience is, that testing software and writing (meaningful) bug reports can be a very rewarding experience, and sometimes the first step to even fix the bug by yourself.
I wish that we in Linux Desktop world could improve that!
Part of me wants to say...
Yay they are doing something responsible and delaying a not ready release...
But another part says...
Boo I want kde 4.5 now...
Good news. I'm testing kde 4.5 rc3 on Arch and it is quite buggy:
-For some reason the clocks plasmoids crash plasma.
- The compositing have serious regression on my config. The new blur effect looks nice, but it makes it completelly unusable.
Don't hesitate to push the release a second time if needed. kde 4.4 is nice enough and very stable.
On the other hand I couldn't resist installing the RC to see the changes :-)...
@bzh: blur is a known issue with some driver<->card combos. it's not secret that not all of the x.org drivers are equally good at all things. :/
as for the plasma crash, please, please, please be sure to submit reports to bugs.kde.org if you haven't already. i don't remember seeing one for what you describe, but maybe i have; hard to say without seeing the backtrace. if you have already reported it, what's the BR#?
Good news indeed. My experiences with 4.5rc3 were quite poor :( After apps continued to crash at random, I decided to kill my ~/.kde* as well.
After logging in, right clicking on klipper to exit causes it to crash quite repeatably.
After that, trying to kill blur (kwin effects are sadly unusable on 4.5 compared to 4.4), kwin hardlocks.
Finally, on the subject of bugs; since kde4 was released, I believe I've filed 4 bugs in total; 1 of which was very rudely closed with a 'WONTFIX', and the other 3 were never commented on or reviewed.
I've been using RC3 on openSUSE for over a week on a 32bit desk and 64bit laptop
The 32bit has the basic nvidia 6xxx 6200(?) with 256 series driver and the 64bit has some rubbish integrated graphics
Neither have shown any of problems experienced by others reporting here, except, unsurprisingly, no blur on the 64 bit laptop
On the 32 bit there are some occasional problems with repainting the screen (occasionally, a drop down menu will go so transparent it cuts a hole through the app to the wallpaper) but there are so many variables with that, which would probably be solved by dropping back to the 194 series nvidia graphics, if I could be bothered, as it doesn't occur on the laptop.
Apart from that I've spotted nothing worth mentioning
(username unrelated to distro)
"occasionally, a drop down menu will go so transparent it cuts a hole through the app to the wallpaper"
that's a long standing bug in x.org.
We should delay the release 6 months to solidarize with the GNOME guys.
Considering 4.4 -> 4.5 direct upgrade (without 4.5 alpha/beta/rc steps) - config issues seem to be fixed (like duplicated notification 'total progress' bars, activities are new in 4.5 so no such issue here). There is a problem however for users who tried 4.5 alpha/beta/rc:
(bug with steps to reproduce and sample test scenario you asked) :
https://bugs.kde.org/show_bug.cgi?id=243003
We may anyway hold 4.5 for a while in Gentoo due to:
https://bugs.kde.org/show_bug.cgi?id=230247 (minor but annoyance and regression)
or
https://bugs.kde.org/show_bug.cgi?id=245491 (like above)
and
https://bugs.kde.org/show_bug.cgi?id=243991 (this will be fun-breaker for many)
@asdffdasfasd: only if they agree to work on KDE 4.5 with us ;)
@Maciej: "There is a problem however for users who tried 4.5 alpha/beta/rc:"
yes, trying pre-release software has its risks. it leads to better final releases, so is worth the occasional bit of pain. we appreciate that people do that :)
"We may anyway hold 4.5 for a while in Gentoo due to:"
as long as people are happy with 4.4.x then it's probably not a horrible idea to wait for 4.5.1, though if every distro (or a majority, even) were to do that we'd never be able to get a good 4.5.1.
4.5.1 should include the new kdepim release as well, which makes 4.5.0 even more of a special case.
perhaps offer 4.5.0 as an opt-in for those who want it?
@Aaron: perhaps offer 4.5.0 as an opt-in for those who want it?
It is opt-in already for those who want to try it - we have 4.5 branch packaged (as 'live' packages - each rebuild picks code from svn branch, same applies to 4.4 and trunk) and we'll have 4.5.0 there as well. It's just a matter of whether to keep it in our playground repository (where we keep live packages and things before me move them to main one) or in testing subtree of main repository (broader audience and full bugs.gentoo.org support).
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