14 DAY TRIAL // The KDE project has gone through some changes and some of the components have been disjointed, which in theory should provide better control for the developers, but it looks like some problems will begin to show really soon.
So, until a few months ago, users had the KDE SC – or simply KDE Software Compilation – and there was only a single version number. Whenever a new build was made available, all the components shared the same version number and it was easy to keep track of everything. Now, the KDE developers have decided to split into different projects, like KDE Plasma for the desktop, KDE Frameworks for all the backend library components, and KDE Applications for all the apps that are used in conjunction with this desktop environment.
The problem is that now all these projects have different build numbers and they use different libraries for dependencies, some of which are not released in time with all the others. It's getting hard to keep track of each of the versions out there because developers no longer synchronize the launches and maintainers have a hard time keeping up.
The first victim
One of the KDE maintainers for Slackware has recently posted a message on a blog, asking the KDE developers to "get their act" together. He is now refusing to jump aboard the KDE Plasma 5 train and he says that he will not push the latest updates until something is done about it.
"There have been a number of releases for the KDE Frameworks 5 and Plasma 5 (which depend on the Frameworks) in decoupled release schedules. To me it is clear that the developers are not (yet) ready for this. Their workflows appear to be such that they write code which depends on other modules' code which only exists in a Git repository. Software starts breaking down because not all of the git code is being released at the time when the dependent code gets released," says Eric Hameleers.
As you all know, dependencies are one of the most important aspects in the Linux world, and getting those wrong can hurt a lot of users. So far, the regressions and other issues have been caught in time and no one has been affected, but Eric Hameleers warns that the new KDE policy is a train wreck waiting to happen.
"Therefore I refuse to build and release Slackware packages for the latest/pending "KDE 5" software set, consisting of Frameworks 5.3.0 (in part 5.3.1 now, apparently) and Plasma 5.1.0. It is a freaking mess with updates, reverts and apologies all abound on the mailinglists. Get your act together!"
The KDE 5 stack is not ready yet
The KDE developers are still putting the final touches to the new stack, and in the meantime there is still KDE SC 4.14.x branch, which will be supported for another month or so. What happens after that is anyone's guess, although it's very likely that KDE will do a much better job at coordinating all the new projects.