[bt-devel] next steps

[Eeli Kaikkonen]

Martin Gruner wrote:
> Hi Eeli,
>
> from the user's point of view there is no change by our migration to QT-only. 
> And I believe that for the HTML component, it is a rather large task. If we 
> put that into the 1.7 basket, it will delay us for months even if we  have 
> lots of time for the work.
>
> In my opinion, we should release 1.7 without the need to be QT-only. We can 
> improve the migration completeness with the following minor versions of 1.7. 
> "Release early, release often" is more important than releasing perfect 
> software. I'm not dogmatic here, though. But if you want to have a QT-only 
> 1.7, we need to talk about a realistic timeframe which is not mid-2009. :D
>
> Gary, what do you think about this matter?
>
> mg
>
>   

I was trying to find our earlier discussion about this matter but 
couldn't find much even though I tried to browse through the mailing 
list repository. Anyways I agree that 1.7 can and should still be KDE 
based. It just has to have enough functionality and no serious known 
bugs. What I mentioned in the previous post should be enough.

The Qt-only release (for *nix) could be 1.8 and the cross-platform 
release 2.0. Of course if somebody works for cross-platform porting 
simultaneously while someone else gets rid of the KDE we might be able 
to release 2.0 directly.

I don't remember what my last proposition for version numbering was - it 
might be 2.0 for Qt-only and 2.1 for crossplatform as well. But they 
should both have some major version number. Even though the 
functionality will not be changed much compared to the current situation 
when moving to Qt only, it has other consequences for users. Many 
non-novice linux/unix users notice the lack of KDE dependency and we 
might get new users for non-KDE platforms. KDE draws maybe hundreds of 
megs of dependencies and it's too much for many users. Qt is small 
enough for e.g. Xubuntu or some netbooks which don't have KDE. And 
compared to 1.6 series we have so many new features that 1.8 or 2.0 is 
fair for the Qt-only release. Additionally, it's not only matter of 
features but advertising. I have told I want to be honest with version 
numbers but 2.0 is not exaggeration for the Qt-only or at least for the 
cross-platform release.

--Eeli Kaikkonen