[Please follow-up to debian-kde@lists.debian.org only. Thanks.] 3.5 RC1 PACKAGES ================ The Debian Qt/KDE team has been hard at work, and would like to announce the availability of packages for KDE 3.5 Release Candidate 1. These packages have not been uploaded to the archive, not even experimental, but are available from the pkg-kde alioth repository. They are still rough and experimental, so don't use them unless you're willing to risk a broken desktop. You can access the packages by adding the following lines to your sources.list: deb http://pkg-kde.alioth.debian.org/kde-3.5-rc1 ./ deb-src http://pkg-kde.alioth.debian.org/kde-3.5-rc1 ./ Again, these packages are NOT fully tested; you should NOT use them unless you are willing to shoulder considerable risk, as not only is the packaging as fresh as wet paint, but this isn't even a final KDE release, and is therefore buggier than usual. I'd like to note that in addition to the usual team of packagers, Josh Metzler contributed a great deal of quality work to the packaging of several modules. Thanks! HELP US HELP YOU ================ In making these packages available, we're giving users an opportunity to help us prepare better packages for KDE 3.5.0. Since these packages are not in the archive, you should not file official bugs concerning them. We ask instead that problems be reported, in detailed messages, to debian-qt-kde@lists.debian.org (ask for a CC if you're not subscribed). Use your judgment. Bugs that are fairly minor, and that are clearly not packaging problems, should be directed to bugs.kde.org instead. Only packaging problems, or really serious upstream issues that we really ought to be aware of, should be reported to us at this stage. If in doubt, tell us. Also, many KDE programs are still missing manpages. If you'd like to help the team, please write a page or two and send it in. You can also help by going through the Bug Tracking System, and closing your old bugs that are no longer relevant, or just cleaning up issues that you know are fixed. NOT ALL MODULES AVAILABLE YET ============================= All fully group-maintained KDE modules are available. The remaining modules are not yet ready, but no significant issues have yet been found running, say, kmail from 3.4.2 with kdelibs 3.5-rc1. But beware that incompatibilities are a possibility. This is the sort of thing we'd be interested in learning about. We don't have a timeline on the availability of the remaining modules; please don't harass the maintainers of those modules, as they are certainly aware of the situation and will make progress as their time permits. OPTIMIZATIONS ============= The much sought performance-enhancing feature of GCC visibility (-fvisibility) is NOT enabled, nor is likely to be enabled for a long time. Bugs in GCC - bugs that may not be fixed until GCC 4.2.0, sadly - are causing too many problems. Indeed, visibility support is no longer enabled by default in KDE, as of a few days ago. There are a few distributions that may persist in enabling this feature, but they are using toolchains that are heavily patched. THE ROAD AHEAD ============== Unfortunately, a necessary change to Debian's GCC configuration [1], that was just uploaded, breaks binary compatibility for many C++ libraries and the applications that use them, forcing them to be renamed, as in, for instance, libfoo7c2 --> libfoo7c2a. KDE is affected by this change. Once the updated toolchain is in place for all architectures, and all libraries that arts and kdelibs build-depend on are also transitioned (could be a while...), then we will upload a transitioned KDE 3.4.3 to Sid (unstable). KDE 3.5.0 will likely then move into experimental. Only once KDE 3.4.3 has moved into Etch (testing), will KDE 3.5 be uploaded to unstable, however. Of course, this plan is tentative, and will be adapted to circumstance, consultations with the Release Team, etc. But this should give you some idea of the road ahead for KDE packaging in Debian. Enjoy the packages! Christopher Martin (on behalf of the Debian Qt/KDE Team) 1. http://lists.debian.org/debian-release/2005/11/msg00080.html
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