Hello all, [Sorry for the crossposting, please follow-up to debian-kde only.]
KDE 3.3.2 in experimental ========================= As you may have noticed, many KDE 3.3.2 modules have been uploaded to experimental during the last few days. These packages include numerous fixes to old and recent bugs, plus the new upstream codebase, so we encourage you to test them and give us some feedback. Anyway, remember that they are in the experimental distribution, which means they may have serious new problems. If you find a bug, please do report it, but be sure to tag the report as pertaining to the experimental packages. Also, take into account that this coming week is the Holiday Season, so response times may be poor. As upgrading to experimental may be cumbersone, we've set up an alternate repository in Alioth. Just add this to your sources.list file: deb http://pkg-kde.alioth.debian.org/kde-3.3.2 ./ Those are the very same packages as the ones in experimental (*), but here a simple apt-get update && apt-get upgrade will work. However, as Alioth is a little overloaded these days, we kindly ask that you install from your usual mirror if you can. (*) Except for kde-i18n, which is not in experimental, and was fetched from http://people.debian.org/~noel/kde-i18n. kdepim, while has been uploaded to the archive, is not in the mirrors yet since it needs NEW processing; packages were fetched from this temporary archive: http://people.debian.org/~schepler/kdepim. Why experimental instead of unstable ------------------------------------ These 3.3.2 packages have been uploaded to experimental, rather than unstable for various reasons: - First and most importantly, so as not to interfere with the KDE 3.3.1 transition to Sarge, which is pending. See below for details. Using unstable would have thrown away all the effort that has been put in having KDE 3.3.1 ready to enter Sarge. - Also, as a lot of extra changes, apart from upgrading to 3.3.2, have been included, the possibility that these packages contain new bugs is high. We've been using them for a week now, and seem to work fine, but one never can tell... - Lastly, the two people behind many of the changes are not Debian Developers and have had (until now) little experience preparing full releases of core KDE packages, further increasing the possibility of breakage. THE TRANSITION TO SARGE ======================= Other than the latest release update [1], there has been no official statement by any of the KDE people about the issue. So here goes: "Yes, Sarge is expected to ship with KDE 3.3". [1] http://lists.debian.org/debian-devel-announce/2004/12/msg00006.html Some weeks ago, the Release Managers expressed their concerns about the transition to the members of the KDE Packaging Team, and then a proposal that tried to address them was issued. After some fruitful discussion, it was finally accepted. We sincerely thank the Release Team for their excellent work, their consideration, and their patience. Why the transition hasn't happened yet -------------------------------------- Although KDE is in pretty good shape and mostly ready to enter Sarge, the transition is blocked by another transition involving gcc-3.4, glibc and some other packages. This happens with some frequency in testing (one transition blocking another one, e.g. the libtiff transition not so long ago), and it's just a matter of time until it gets solved. The people involved in the gcc-3.4/glibc issue are working on it at the moment. So, will Sarge have KDE 3.3.1 or 3.3.2 -------------------------------------- That's a question that only time can answer. Although KDE 3.3.2 is certainly (as always) an improvement over 3.3.1, we really just can't upload 3.3.2 to sid until 3.3.1 is in Sarge, since that would mean to risk having the transition not happen at all! So, the plan is: 1. Get KDE 3.3.1 into sarge 2. Upload KDE 3.3.2 to sid *if* the experimental packages have not shown any major bugs *and* all the people involved in KDE packaging agree it's time to do so. After that, and once KDE is in shape again (built on all architectures, no Release Critical bugs, etc.), it will be a decision in the hands of the Release Managers. CALL FOR HELP ============= We'd also like to take this opportunity to ask for help from users in continuing to improve KDE in Debian. The KDE packages are enormous, and take a great deal of time to maintain properly. One particular task where users could be of great assistance is the writing of proper package descriptions. Few KDE packages have more than a bit of marketing boilerplate at the moment. Please help us by writing good, useful descriptions, made available in severity minor bugs against the relevant package. You may find this debian-kde thread [2] of some interest. [2] http://lists.debian.org/debian-kde/2004/11/msg00093.html If you're feeling really ambitious, manpages would also be very welcome for packages currently lacking. PEOPLE ====== KDE 3.3.2 packaging credits: - kde-i18n packages were prepared by Noèl Köthe. - kdepim and kdegames packages were prepared by Daniel Schepler. - arts, kdelibs, kdebase, kdegraphics, kdemultimedia, kdenetwork, kdeadmin, kdeaccesibility and kdeutils packages were prepared by Christopher Martin and Adeodato Simó. Also a big thanks to: - Daniel Schepler, who sponsored all the experimental uploads done by Adeodato and Christopher. - Riku Voipio, who has been very active in getting KDE 3.3.1 in shape and ready for Sarge. - Chris Cheney, who (needless to say) has done the enormous task of maintaining many of the packages for a long time, and who shall be active again soon. Enjoy! -- Christopher Martin, Adeodato Simó -- Adeodato Simó EM: asp16 [ykwim] alu.ua.es | PK: DA6AE621 Listening to: Martirio - Mañana de carnaval Love in your heart wasn't put there to stay. Love isn't love 'til you give it away. -- Oscar Hammerstein II