do not want to switch to KDE 4 yet

faq
flatforty
contribute
subscribe
configure
search
rdf

main
parent

do not want to switch to KDE 4 yet
by YAC {Yet Another Critic} on Wednesday 20/Feb/2008, @22:48

I guess that I have a large disagreement about what the issue is here. I want to switch to KDE-4, but the KDE-4.0 BRANCH is still seriously broken and it appears that the bugs won't be fixed. We are back to the broken development model where bugs reported against the current 4.0.x release are considered fixed if they work in KDE-TRUNK, even if they specifically still exist in KDE-4.0 BRANCH.

Related Links

·   Articles on KDE Official News
·   Also by YAC {Yet Another Critic}
·   Contact author

The Fine Print: The following comments are owned by whomever posted them.
( Reply )

Re: do not want to switch to KDE 4 yet
by Kevin Kofler on Wednesday 20/Feb/2008, @23:42

We've had this rant in another thread already... Bugfixes are definitely being backported to the branch, if a developer isn't doing that, nag him/her (assuming it's really a bug, not a feature addition, unless it falls under a freeze exemption like Plasma).

[ Reply To This | View ]

Re: do not want to switch to KDE 4 yet
by JRT on Thursday 21/Feb/2008, @09:51

I think that you miss the point -- but then those that want to simply dismiss any criticism always miss the point. Dismissing a true statement because it has already been made in a different context is useless rhetoric.

If bugs are closed as soon as "it works in TRUNK" who is going to even know that they still need to be fixed in the realease BRANCH? For that matter, how will we even know that the bug will still be "fixed" when the next release branch is tagged/released (such problems tend to reoccur).

We shouldn't have to nag developers. They should take enough pride in their work to fix the bugs. Yes, some bug fixes are "backported" but that does not mean that all of them are. We naively presume that a release branch is more stable than the current TRUNK, but if the bugs are fixed in TRUNK and not in the release BRANCH, this isn't going to be true. If the release BRANCH isn't the place to, fix bugs, there is little use in having it.

See bugs 153986 (a crash, which was marked FIXED when it is, at best, WORKS FOR ME) and 152243, which don't appear to have been backported (AFAIK, they weren't actually fixed).

[ Reply To This | View ]

Re: do not want to switch to KDE 4 yet
by Kevin Kofler on Thursday 21/Feb/2008, @19:15

I don't want to dismiss any criticism, only false criticism. I think there's some things which can be improved (for example IMHO the simple menu should be the default), but this process isn't it.

> If bugs are closed as soon as "it works in TRUNK" who is going to even know
> that they still need to be fixed in the realease BRANCH?

Normally developers are supposed to backport the fixes as soon as possible, that way they won't forget. Sometimes, however, other stuff comes up and they just don't have the time, and then forget about it, in which case politely (!) reminding the developer is the right thing to do.

And again, your proposed solution of fixing the bugs in the branch first is a very bad idea when you think long term because it means bugs already fixed in older releases can reappear in newer ones if the developer forgets to forward-port them. Both trunk-only and branch-only fixes are bad, but a branch-only fix is much worse in the longer term! Branch-only fix == regression. (And in fact, 3.5-branch-only fixes are one of the complaints I have about the way KDE 4 was developed: I had to forward-port 2 or 3 branch-only commits to Kompare, and that app got almost no commits recently, so I'm really worried about how frequent this problem is. So please don't say I'm here to dismiss all criticism.)

> See bugs 153986 (a crash, which was marked FIXED when it is, at best, WORKS
> FOR ME) and 152243, which don't appear to have been backported (AFAIK, they
> weren't actually fixed).

I've commented in those bugs. See:
http://bugs.kde.org/show_bug.cgi?id=153986
http://bugs.kde.org/show_bug.cgi?id=152243

[ Reply To This | View ]

Re: do not want to switch to KDE 4 yet
by Troy Unrau on Thursday 21/Feb/2008, @15:59

With 6 months releases in trunk, this shouldn't actually be a huge problem. I could understand if it was 5 years between releases that this would suck.

Every KDE version ever released has had bugs. If we stopped to fix them all, we'd be in KDE 1.3.54 right now and would have never moved forward.

/rant

[ Reply To This | View ]

Re: do not want to switch to KDE 4 yet
by Kevin Kofler on Thursday 21/Feb/2008, @19:25

But if all that's needed to fix the bug on the branch too is an svn merge and an svn commit, then I don't see a good reason not to do it. (And I'm a developer, so I know what I'm talking about.)

[ Reply To This | View ]

The Fine Print: The previous comments are owned by whomever posted them.
( Reply )


		"Sorry, security is not optional." -- Waldo Bastian
KDE®, "K Desktop Environment", "KDE Dot News", "got the dot?" and the KDE Logo® are trademarks or registered trademarks of KDE e.V. in the European Union, the United States and other countries. All other trademarks and copyrights on this page are owned by their respective owners. Comments are owned by the poster. The rest: Copyright © 2000-2008 KDE e.V. for The KDE Project. For further information or comments on this site, please contact the Webmaster.