KDE SC 4.7 Release Candidate Hits The Web

[phoronix]

Phoronix: KDE SC 4.7 Release Candidate Hits The Web

The KDE community has done an early Saturday morning release of the first release candidate for KDE Software Compilation 4.7. After being in beta for a month, the KDE developers are gearing up for the release of KDE SC 4.7 by the end of July...

http://www.phoronix.com/vr.php?view=OTU5OQ

[siride]

Can someone enlighten me as to what goes on between the tagging and the release? And for that matter, why there are 7 days between the 4.7 final tag and the actual release? It seems a long time and the schedule is pretty unclear as to what kind of activity actually goes on during all of the RC and final release phase.

This is not a flame post, I'm honestly curious because I just don't know.

[Tsiolkovsky]

After tagging the tarballs are made and a few days are given so that distribution packagers can test the packages (so that everything compiles and nothing is missing) and if necessary corrections are made.

[pingufunkybeat]

Can someone enlighten me as to what goes on between the tagging and the release? And for that matter, why there are 7 days between the 4.7 final tag and the actual release?

The week is for all the distributions to prepare packages and make sure that it installs without problems. Some distros also maintain their own patchset changing the vanilla KDE code in some way, and they want to make sure that these still work fine with the final release.

That way, when 4.7 SC is officially announced, it should be available on all distros and users can simply install the packages from their distros' repositories.

Absolutely nothing changes in terms of the KDE codebase. Once it's tagged, that's the final release.

[birdie]

Now that KDE developers have run out of "new great features" to add, maybe they'll start thinking about overall KDE optimization (KDE4 RAM consumption is just insane) and bug fixing?

[allquixotic]

Is there a Ubuntu 11.04 PPA that will contain the SC 4.7 code? I'm currently running stock 4.6.x on Natty and I like it.

[siban]

Is there a Ubuntu 11.04 PPA that will contain the SC 4.7 code? I'm currently running stock 4.6.x on Natty and I like it.

Maybe some of these:
https://launchpad.net/~kubuntu-ppa

I think it will be in the backports PPA:
https://launchpad.net/~kubuntu-ppa/+archive/backports

[bachinchi]

Now that KDE developers have run out of "new great features" to add, maybe they'll start thinking about overall KDE optimization (KDE4 RAM consumption is just insane) and bug fixing?

At least (I hope) they won't screw their DE as GNOME people.

[devius]

Now that KDE developers have run out of "new great features" to add, maybe they'll start thinking about overall KDE optimization (KDE4 RAM consumption is just insane) and bug fixing?

I hope you're right. KDE is in so much need of bug fixing. I don't care what the ratio of bugs to LOC is supposed to be, it still feels and looks like it has more bugs compared to gnome. Maybe it has less bugs, but at least on gnome they know how to cover them up really well and they don't stick out all the time affecting productivity and workflow as much :P

PS: I doubt they have run out of "new great features". Just take a look at the file transfer notification introduced in version 4.6. Why do we need a graph in the thing?? Sure it's kind of cool for the geek, but if I want to look at graphs I'd rather use the system monitor. Why duplicate features, especially when there are so many bugs in the bloody notification system to begin with?

[DeepDayze]

I hope you're right. KDE is in so much need of bug fixing. I don't care what the ratio of bugs to LOC is supposed to be, it still feels and looks like it has more bugs compared to gnome. Maybe it has less bugs, but at least on gnome they know how to cover them up really well and they don't stick out all the time affecting productivity and workflow as much :P

PS: I doubt they have run out of "new great features". Just take a look at the file transfer notification introduced in version 4.6. Why do we need a graph in the thing?? Sure it's kind of cool for the geek, but if I want to look at graphs I'd rather use the system monitor. Why duplicate features, especially when there are so many bugs in the bloody notification system to begin with?

While KDE 4 has come a long way since 4.0 (which was a bug ridden pile of garbage), it indeed still feels buggy compared to KDE 3.5.10.

I should say that after KDE 4.7 it should be time for optimization and bug fixing. For the most part the infrastructure is more stable than ever still plenty of work to do before we can declare KDE 4 stable and mature.