KDE SC 4.8.4 Status

[wryfi]

According to this article[1] from January, there is no official kde qa team, so that answers one of your questions.

That doesn't mean there is no testing, of course; and I don't know what their testing policy is.

It's actually quite impressive, however, to look at some of the stats cited in the article, in terms of the number of developers and amount of money going into KDE versus Gnome. With a much smaller team and fewer resources, KDE has been kicking ass, while Gnome has been busy alienating its community with Microsoft-style "features" (e.g. change for the sake of driving adoption).

So while release bugs are annoying in KDE as in any project, I think the KDE team is doing a fantastic job given the constraints they're working with.

Yes, a QA process would be helpful. Are you volunteering to head up the effort? ;-)

[1] http://eparrillae.net/wordpress/?p=736

[eggbert]

I got to wonder if KDE actually has any form of quality assurance. There usually seems to be at least one regression between releases, and in this case its a real show stopper. I can appreciate that KDE is an enourmous project, and they are strapped for resources, but it seems pretty sad that a critial bug like this can get through.

Seems like this bug would have been spotted right off that bat with proper testing. Reading the mailing list, it looks like someone did a commit they shouldn't have. So I got to wonder:
Do they do unit testing, etc, and do they have a quality assurance team?

Don't know, just get the feeling sometimes that there is something not quite right with their development model.

[wryfi]

Based on what I've read on the kde release-team mailing list[1], it looks like kde will probably roll a 4.8.5 release to fix the fatal flaws in 4.8.4. If I were a betting man, I would wager that kubuntu will skip 4.8.4 entirely and wait for 4.8.5.

[1] http://mail.kde.org/pipermail/releas...ne/005985.html

[OneLine]

http://irclogs.ubuntu.com/2012/06/15...ntu-devel.html

debfx I'll move 4.8.4 to the updates ppa once kde4libs finished building 17:46
Riddell debfx: problems got sorted? 17:46
debfx Riddell: yep, upstream reverted 2 commits 17:46

The announcement will be: http://www.kubuntu.org/

[OneLine]

Only the kubuntu developers know (you could ask this from the kubuntu-devel irc)- but if you want my guess:

Taking a hammer:




A Guess

The KDE 4.8.4 may be available soon from the Kubuntu updates PPA /1/:

http://irclogs.ubuntu.com/2012/06/13...ntu-devel.html

Riddell 4.8.4 needs moved out the way still then build in -ninjas? 17:21
Riddell 4.8.4 is in staging, lovely 17:22
ScottK 4.8.4 isn't ready for prime time due to kdelibs issues. 17:25
Riddell yeah I saw 17:25
ScottK However, I hear with kdelibs 4.8.3 the rest of 4.8.4 is ~fine. 17:26
ScottK It might work to move all but kde4libs to the updates PPA. 17:26

or maybe not...

debfx nah let's wait for a proper 4.8.4 fix 17:30
debfx especially since we can't move that to p-proposed 17:31
ScottK Debian is uploading kde4libs 4.8.3/KDE 4.8.4 to unstable, so they seem confident. 17:31
debfx well Debian is in a hurry to get 4.8 in before the freeze, we aren't 17:31
debfx are they going to upload a 4.8.4+really4.8.3? 17:33
yofel they seem to have tracked down the 4.8.4 issues down to some nepomuk/soprano socket issues 17:34
yofel (see k-c-d) 17:35
highvoltage debfx: when is debian freeze? is it a set date? 17:36
debfx highvoltage: they are targeting the second half of june 17:37

The KDE 4.8.3 testing and transition from the Kubuntu updates PPA to the Ubuntu updates did take about a month:

https://launchpad.net/~kubuntu-ppa/+archive/ppa:

kde-baseapps (4:4.8.3-0ubuntu0.1~ppa1) precise

Published on 2012-05-03

http://www.kubuntu.org/news/kde-sc-4.8.3:

Packages for the May updates of the KDE Platform, Workspaces and Applications 4.8.3 are available for Kubuntu 12.04 in the official repositories.

Submitted on Thu, 2012-05-31

Links:

1. https://launchpad.net/~kubuntu-ppa

“Package Archives for Kubuntu” team

Kubuntu Backports
Kubuntu Beta Backports
Kubuntu Experimental
Kubuntu Updates
Kubuntu Package Staging (DON'T USE)

When do you believe that 4.8.4 will be released over the backports channel to us?

[OneLine]

Release annoncement

http://www.kde.org/announcements/announce-4.8.4.php

Earlier Kubuntu forums

Path to the Ubuntu updates: http://www.kubuntuforums.net/showthr...9201-kde-4-8-4

Blocked/Regression

http://irclogs.ubuntu.com/2012/06/11...ntu-devel.html

Riddell debfx: how's 4.8.4? 12:48
debfx blocked by https://bugs.kde.org/301453 12:49
ubottu KDE bug 301453 in general "nepomuk regression just after 4.8.3." [Critical,New: ] 12:49
Riddell debfx: oh nasty 12:49
debfx see also "KDE SC 4.8.4 important problems" on kde-core-devel 12:49

"KDE SC 4.8.4 important problems" on kde-core-devel"

kde.org Mailing Lists: https://mail.kde.org/mailman/listinfo/
--> https://mail.kde.org/mailman/listinfo/kde-core-devel
-----> http://lists.kde.org/?t=133931393100003&r=1&w=2