After the release of the KDE Plasma Workspaces 4.9 I have read quite often in the Internet that users and also Media assume that the next release will be 5.0. This is not the case, the next release of the KDE Plasma Workspaces, Applications and Plattform will be 4.10 to be expected at the beginning of 2013 (release schedule has not yet been finalized by the release team).
I do not know why people assume that there would be a 5.0 release but I guess it is related to the work on Qt 5 and KDE Frameworks 5. Also some people seem to assume that after 4.9 the 5.0 has to follow due to second number being single digit, but a simple look at e.g. GNOME would show that numbers can increase as long as one likes.
At the current time there are no plans yet for a 5.0 release of the KDE Plasma Workspaces and at least I do not see any reason to increment the first number even after the release of Framworks 5. I expect that there will at least also be a 4.11 release before we start to think about version numbering for software based on Frameworks 5.
Many people read it as a decimal separator.
Thus 4.10 = 4.1 and 4.9>4.10
It’s a common misunderstanding and that’s why Ubuntu write 12.04 instead of 12.4
I don’t think we will ever learn all people the major.minor numberings – I hope we spend our resources on making software instead. Sooner or later people see that the next version is 4.10, then they get it and life goes on while we all dream of 5.0
Version strings are not in decimal format, that is perhaps the problem people have. They think they involve maths, but they don’t. http://semver.org/
Also ubuntu, iirc, uses 12.04 because it’s 04/12 or the 4th month of 2012. There versioning isn’t decimal based it’s time based.
Something that I’ve been wondering for a while:
After the release of KDE 4.0, the team settled down into it’s current rhythm release shedule, which is a 4.x release every six months, with 4.x.x releases inbetween, so that users could decide how stable their system had to be (I’m assuming that was the reason anyway). Slightly cautious users might only want to hop on at 4.x.1, for example, while systems that HAD to be stable could stick to 4.x.5 releases.
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But, now that KDE has gotten nice and robust, and the 5.0 release isn’t going to disturb that. Is it maybe time to settle on a new release schedule? Maybe release every 4 months or so?
The reason I’m asking, is because, as someone jumping from stable release to stable release, it can be annoying hearing about a nifty, and relatively minor, new feature now, and having to wait 6 months for 4.10 before it’s allowed into KDE.
Maybe, considering that the changes going into KDE are getting less drastic, it’s time to consider releasing a little more frequently?
6 months is already borderline too fast, according to many developers working on new features. and, many distros already align well the status quo.
I’m not suggesting we make it faster, or even slower. Just that the new features gradient is made a little bit smoother.
we recently had a discussion about it on the release team mailing list about giving the individual projects a way to define their own schedule. E.g. for KWin I would be fine with a Firefox like release cycle (given taht we just always have to be stable, never break master and so on).
Btw. if you want to always run the latest master you should consider using Project Neon.
I hate version numbering. That’s because I’m such a mathematical thinker; I want versions to go from x.9.n to x.9.n++ until an organization is ready to release x+1.
You skipped the middle digit.
4.9.0
4.9.1
4.9.2
4.9.3
4.9.4
4.10.0
4.10.1
…
4.11.0
…
4.12.0 (?)
…
5.0.0
“Tell me something that I don’t know.”
This is of course all wrong.
Version counting is perfectly hexadecimal (it’s com·pu·ter things, morons) but for technical reasons (UTF-241) digits are used to represent the chars (ie. a == 10, b == 11 etc) so after “4.9” there’ll be “4.a” (aka 4.10) then 4.b, 4.c, 4.d, 4.e, 4.f (aka 4.15)
At that time frameworks is hopefully finished to cover my little ass on this nonsense claim =)
PS:
i actually like using the date to tag the version – that’s much less random than anything else (but counting revisions)
4.10.0!
can we at least expect a SC 4.10/4.11 built with Qt 5.x?
no, that is impossible. We cannot depend on Qt 5 before Frameworks 5 has been finished.