Arch Linux

amish

Member

Registered: 2014-05-10

Posts: 513

Why not name KDE 6 packages with 6 in their names?

Hello

So KDE 6 is around the corner.

In last few months many KDE 5 packages were renamed to have number 5 in their names to prepare for KDE 6 packages.

For e.g kdesu was renamed to kdesu5. And "new" kdesu package became part of KDE-Unstable repo. (Qt6 based)

So why not name KDE 6 packages to have number 6 in their names?

i.e. why not name kdesu of KDE-Unstable as kdesu6 instead?

This way in future when KDE 7 comes we wont need to do whole rename (replaces) exercise again (of renaming whole bunch of KDE 6 packages)

Any idea why it has not been done so?

Thanks and regards

Amish

V1del

Forum Moderator

Registered: 2012-10-16

Posts: 25,273

Re: Why not name KDE 6 packages with 6 in their names?

It's common packaging convention across the entire distribution that the "older library version"  gets versioned in the package name while the newer one drops the version, there are lots of other examples of this, e.g. ffmpeg and ffmpeg4.4 and clang and clang15

amish

Member

Registered: 2014-05-10

Posts: 513

Re: Why not name KDE 6 packages with 6 in their names?

I know but KDE has tons of packages and every 2-3 years (when new KDE version comes out) developers do renaming and replacing exercise. Which can be avoided if all KDE 6 package names include number 6 by default in name.

V1del

Forum Moderator

Registered: 2012-10-16

Posts: 25,273

Re: Why not name KDE 6 packages with 6 in their names?

And? If it's convention and the devs want to keep it that way, they are going to keep it that way.

New KDE versions are tied to the Qt release it's more like 5-6 years (for Qt alone, then add 2 - 3 years for KDE the pull up) maybe even more and I don't find any discussions or roadmap for a Qt 7 release being in the works. This is likely farther off than you think... If we're going by the past, Qt 5 got released in 2013 first versions of that for KDE appeared around a year later. So that gives us a 10 year timespan.

Last edited by V1del (2024-02-25 03:25:08)

seth

Member

From: Won't reply 2 private help req

Registered: 2012-09-03

Posts: 76,569

Re: Why not name KDE 6 packages with 6 in their names?

KDENT
KDEXP
KDE10 ("the last KDE you'll ever buy")

@amish, the general practice keeps users updated.
The only weird part in the specific situation is that KDE5 got relabled before KDE6 got released, so it's actively steering (old) users away from the update.
Maybe that's a pattern for the next major gnome update, too …

---

How to upload text · How to boot w/o GUI · Disable Windows Fast-Start! · Fix your xinitrc

amish

Member

Registered: 2014-05-10

Posts: 513

Re: Why not name KDE 6 packages with 6 in their names?

So what will happen when Arch releases KDE 6?

For example: kdesu will have replaces in PKGBUILD for kdesu5? So upgrade will remove kdesu5 and replace it with kdesu?

Will KDE 5 seemlessly migrate to KDE 6?

OR people will have to do some manual upgrade?

Last edited by amish (2024-02-25 09:21:30)

V1del

Forum Moderator

Registered: 2012-10-16

Posts: 25,273

Re: Why not name KDE 6 packages with 6 in their names?

Just the framework libs, so if plasma-desktop gets pulled up you still get pulled up on update

amish

Member

Registered: 2014-05-10

Posts: 513

Re: Why not name KDE 6 packages with 6 in their names?

@V1del - I did not understand your reply in technical way.

My question is, if you run:

pacman -Qqs '^k.*5$'

It shows me 70+ packages. How will they be upgraded to KDE 6?

It looks like all related KDE 6 packages will need replaces-(k.*5) in PKGBUILD.

V1del

Forum Moderator

Registered: 2012-10-16

Posts: 25,273

Re: Why not name KDE 6 packages with 6 in their names?

The vast majority of those are KDE frameworks which are libraries used by KDE, for KDE applications. As an end user their presence should be mostly transparent to you, just know that they are required for KDE stuff to work. If you instead look at

pacman -Qg plasma kde-applications

as soon as those are updated to their Qt6/KDE6 counterparts all of the packages ending in 5 will be logically pulled up as required by the dependencies of all of the other software requiring them as appropriate. At which point the kf5 dependencies will either not be needed by anything and can be cleaned up by the standard orphan removal process or will still be used by software that hasn't been ported yet. There's likely a bunch of KDE stuff that might not get immediately pulled up to 6 yet depending on developer availability.

amish

Member

Registered: 2014-05-10

Posts: 513

Re: Why not name KDE 6 packages with 6 in their names?

So there is going to be a phase where both KDE 5 and KDE 6 will co-exist? Including Qt5 and Qt6.

V1del

Forum Moderator

Registered: 2012-10-16

Posts: 25,273

Re: Why not name KDE 6 packages with 6 in their names?

Single applications, yes. As has been the case during the Qt4/5 transition and will be the case here as well. From the looks of it KDE ensures a bit harder that the core KDE/Plasma apps are all ported (there have been a few months between e.g. the plasma release and dolphin and konsole becoming usable in the Qt4/5 transition) so that timeframe is likely a bunch shorter than it was. But Qt4 got dropped from the repos relatively late in 2019, which was 6 after the first Plasma 5 release)

And KDE is not the only Qt user, if there's software that built against 5 and not yet ported to 6 you still want to be able to run those.

Last edited by V1del (2024-02-25 10:05:23)

amish

Member

Registered: 2014-05-10

Posts: 513

Re: Why not name KDE 6 packages with 6 in their names?

Thanks for reply. But that brings one more question.

Since KDE6 will default to Wayland, there may be case where Qt5 app or KDE 5 app may not work because that app still depends on X11? (May be xorg-xwayland can help)

AFAIK - KDE 5 was not completely Wayland ready.

Last edited by amish (2024-02-25 10:35:35)

V1del

Forum Moderator

Registered: 2012-10-16

Posts: 25,273

Re: Why not name KDE 6 packages with 6 in their names?

KDE 5/Qt5 in general is wayland compatible, I'm running it right now. The main problem here are a few very specific applications that need to manipulate the cursor or have some special graphics needs, but those are few and far in between, I'm not aware of any KDE application that doesn't work currently. But yes all of those can be ran via xwayland/QT_QPA_PLATFORM=xcb if needed. Most often it's properietary applications shipping their own Qt bundled (... and not shipping the wayland plugin) that can cause trouble here, like zoom or telegram or so.

Last edited by V1del (2024-02-25 11:33:04)