The question of when Xfce 4.4 will be unmasked has been coming up with increasing frequency.
The default answer is… wait, for it, when it’s ready :>>
A more elaborate answer follows:
We have established a ‘tracker’ bug here. The team has been pretty good about keeping on top of bugs that come up with it, as in, there are no known issues currently.
So that means it’s ready, right? Not quite. Below are the outstanding issues I see:
In making haste to get a 0-day release of 4.4, some corners may have been cut. In particular, some of the xfce-extra packages are lacking the appropriate keywords, even though xfce-base/xfce4-extras depend on them. This is only for new xfce-extra packages, which have been added only relatively recently.
Icons seemed to have moved around a bit, as in, which packages owns them. This is a bit problematic, as it causes file collisions (enabled by FEATURES=”collision-protect”). While not critical to unmasking, it is pretty key for stabilizing, and the sooner it can be fixed the better.
The other things I’m concerned about is the upgrade path from 4.2 to 4.4. Some things that were extras in 4.2 are now part of 4.4. As a result, some xfce-extra packages have blockers against them. In other cases, xfce-extra packages haven’t been updated for 4.4, or otherwise are no longer maintained. These xfce-extra packages have blockers against them as well. The consequence of these point is that you will have to unmerge the packages that are reported as being blocked.