Quo vadis KDE

This article has been rated as PG-18 due to violent behaviour and strong
language usage (I would use nudity too, but I bet you would not find my
naked pictures that amusing :)).

In this article we are going to look what are we cooking in the Gentoo/KDE land.
Overall KDE health status in Gentoo is really good altho even we can use some
help as you will see bellow, so if you find yourself bored enough you should
join #gentoo-kde @ freenode.net and help us out.

Stable (do I hear obsolete?) stuff

So officially there WON’T be any stable version from the 4.5 series. I am really
sorry to break your hearts but first version that we will consider to go to stable will
be probably the 4.6.1. Main reason is the Kdepim and the shitstorm (hope this word
won’t offend you that much) it is causing with borked translations and the Akonadi
backend issues. So no pink ponies this time.

On the misc packages that are not part of the KDE SC (or how is that thing called
nowdays) we are quite often having latest version in testing, but frankly none
ever bothered to open stabilisation bugs for them. Here we probably need some
dedicated person that would work on the stable packages and open those bugs or
some good soul could write simple to-stable script similar to the tool we use when
we stabilise Xorg.

Testing matters

So you are using ~ software you say? Brave heart you are? Good we need such
lads. In testing land we are quite edgy and we are able to deliver 0 day bumps.
That is caused by the simple fact that all Gentoo/KDE devs are using testing on
their machines.

In testing land we need just people that really use the software and are able
to open version bump bugs (with proper patches if required) if we forgot to
do so ourselves (but remember that if you open 0 day bump bug i will kill 1
kitten and 2 pandas) [I am proud member of PETA (People Eating Tasty Animals)
so nothing will go vain :P].

Bleeding edge (live stuff)

I see your central heating is not working so you need to compile KDE stuff
every day, or just your ego is too large to find monthly recompilation
satisfying.

Situation here is getting pretty quickly from SNAFU to TARFU mode. We need
to migrate our eclasses to support GIT and move away from SVN, here I would
really like to see a git-2.eclass prepared first (random thoughts and ideas
about what it should do are wide spread around the Gentoo bugzilla), so anyone
who enjoys writing bash scripts is more than welcome to help us in overlay
to write it.
* SNAFU = situation normal, all fucked up.
* TARFU = things are really fucked up.

Special case – CMake

The CMake ebuild in main tree sucks a bit, cause it might fail to build
completely under some special cases (yeah I know I am dumb for writing it
that way). So it needs complete overhaul to be doing this exactly:
bootstrap itself and then compile itself again using just bootstraped version.
If anyone is willing to spent their time on this, they are gladly welcome.

Final word

I whine around all what we need to do in the KDE land but what am I doing? Well
thats quite simple: I am lately focusing more on Xorg and QA stuff, cause if
we have non-working X everyone would notice, but if KDE nukes itself out only
like 40% of users would whine. Also I like much more Katamari release approach
of small apps with various versions named as one Xorg release rather than KDE
huge bloby releases (are you aware that most stuff you compile every month
did not change at all?).

I can hear you saying “But you are KDE team lead so how come you can’t do
more?”. Answer to this is quite simple, we all are unpaid volunteers so I have
just limited free time i must devote between Gentoo and also pretending that
I have some normal life. Here I could say that I can accept donations to focus
on KDE more, but since I don’t have any Paypal account nor I do want anything
from amazon, you guys are doomed until i find working on KDE being fun again :)
(altho if you are pretty gals or you are willing to sent your pretty sisters,
other female relatives into my direction I might change my mind a bit,
especially if those are interested in CompSci :P).

Completely unrelated question

Should I try the Google recruitment process? Do I even stand a chance against
those smart lads they are currently recruiting? What do ya think?

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3 Responses to Quo vadis KDE

  1. h017ah says:

    Using the -9999 ebuilds from the overlay, quite pleased! Keep up the good work!

    KDE is really getting better everyday.

  2. Will B. says:

    Should I try the Google recruitment process? Do I even stand a chance against
    those smart lads they are currently recruiting? What do ya think?

    Absolutely you should – what does it cost? If I see an opportunity I’m even the slightest bit interested in, I apply and (hopefully) interview. Sometimes it works out, sometimes it doesn’t – in no cases has it ever hurt me.

  3. Well I love KDE and I am very happy that it is evolving very fast, how geeks say „a fast-moving target“ :) Can’t wait for 4.6 to show up, sometimes I even dream about KDE SC 5 :D Love Gentoo, Love KDE, where there is a shell and KDE, there is always a way :)