KDE Gear 25.12 release schedule

This is the release schedule the release team agreed on

  https://community.kde.org/Schedules/KDE_Gear_25.12_Schedule

Dependency freeze is in around 2 weeks (November 6) and feature freeze one 
after that. Get your stuff ready! 

KDE Gear 25.08 branches created

Make sure you commit anything you want to end up in the KDE Gear 25.08 
releases to them

Next Dates:  

• July 10 2025: 25.08 Freeze and Beta (25.07.80) tag & release
• July 24 2025: 25.08 RC (25.07.90) Tagging and Release
• August  7 2025: 25.08 Tagging
• August 14 2025: 25.08 Release

 

https://community.kde.org/Schedules/KDE_Gear_25.08_Schedule 

KDE will drop Qt5 CI Support at the End of September 2025

If you are a developer and your KDE project is still based on Qt5 you should really really start porting to Qt6 now. 

https://mail.kde.org/pipermail/kde-devel/2025-June/003742.html

KDE Gear 25.08 release schedule

This is the release schedule the release team agreed on

https://community.kde.org/Schedules/KDE_Gear_25.08_Schedule

Dependency freeze is in around 2 weeks (July 3) and feature freeze one
after that. Get your stuff ready! 

Send your talks to Akademy 2025! (Now really for real)

We have moved the deadline for talk submission for Akademy 2025 to the end of the month. Submit your talks now! 

https://mail.kde.org/pipermail/kde-community/2025q2/008217.html 

https://akademy.kde.org/2025/cfp/

Qt World Summit 2025

These past two days I attended the Qt World Summit 2025

It happened in Munich in the SHOWPALAST MÜNCHEN. The venue is HUGE,  we had around 800 attendees (unofficial sources, don't trust the number too much) and it felt it could hold more. One slightly unfortunate thing is that it was a bit cold (temperatures in Munich these two days were well below the average for May) and quite some parts of the venue are outdoors, but you can't control the weather, so not much to "fix" here.

 

The venue is somewhat strangely focused on horses, but that's nothing more than an interesting quirk.

Qt World Summit is an event for the Qt developers around the world and the talks range from showcases of Qt in different products, to technical talks about how to improve performance along others less Qt centric talks about how to collaborate with other developers or about "modern C++".

As KDE we participated in the event with a stand trying to explain people what we do (David Redondo and Nicolas Fella were more in the stand than me, kudos to them)

For following years we may need to re-think a bit better our story for this event since I feel that "we do a Linux desktop and Free Software applications using Qt" is not really what Qt developers really care about, we maybe should focus more on "You can learn Qt in KDE, join us!" and "We have lots Free [Software] Qt libraries you can use!".

 

Talks for the videos will be published "soon" (or so I've been told). When that happens the ones I recommend you to watch are "Navigating Code Collaboration" by  LAURA SAVINO, "QML Bindings in Qt6" by ULF HERMANN and "C++ as a 21st Century Language" by BJARNE STROUSTRUP, but the agenda was packed with talks so make sure to check the videos since probably your tastes and mine don't 100% align.

 

All in all it was a great event, it is good to see that Qt is doing well since we use it for the base of almost everything we do in KDE. Thanks to The Qt Company and the rest of the sponsors for organizing it. 

 

 

KDE Gear 25.04 branches created

Make sure you commit anything you want to end up in the KDE Gear 25.04
releases to them

Next Dates  
    March 13 2025: 25.04 Freeze and Beta (25.03.80) tag & release
    March 27, 2025: 25.04 RC (25.03.90) Tagging and Release
    April 10, 2025: 25.04 Tagging
    April 17, 2025: 25.04 Release

https://community.kde.org/Schedules/KDE_Gear_25.04_Schedule

KDE Gear 25.04 release schedule

This is the release schedule the release team agreed on

https://community.kde.org/Schedules/KDE_Gear_25.04_Schedule

Dependency freeze is in around 3 weeks (March 6) and feature freeze one
after that. Get your stuff ready!
 

KDE Gear 24.12 branches created

Make sure you commit anything you want to end up in the KDE Gear 24.12
releases to them

Next Dates:

•   November 14, 2024: 24.12 freeze and beta (24.11.80) tagging and release
•   November 28, 2024: 24.12 RC (24.11.90) tagging and release
•   December  5, 2024: 24.12 tagging
•   December 12, 2024: 24.12 release

https://community.kde.org/Schedules/KDE_Gear_24.12_Schedule

KDE Gear 24.12 release schedule

This is the release schedule the release team agreed on

https://community.kde.org/Schedules/KDE_Gear_24.12_Schedule

Dependency freeze is in around 3 weeks (November 7) and feature freeze one
after that. Get your stuff ready!

Google Summer of Code Mentor Summit 2024

This weekend "The KDE Alberts"[1] attended Google Summer of Code Mentor Summit 2024 in Sunnyvale, California.

The Google Summer of Code Mentor Summit is an annual unconference that every project participating in Google Summer of Code 2024 is invited to attend. This year it was the 20th year celebration of the program!

I was too late to take a picture of the full cake!

We attended many sessions ranging from how to try to avoid falling into the "xz problem" to collecting donations or shaping the governance of open source projects.

 

We met lots of people that knew what KDE was and were happy to congratulate us on the job done and also a few that did not know KDE and were happy to learn about what we do.

 

We also did a quick lightning talk about the GSOC projects KDE mentored this year and led two sessions: one centered around the problems some open source application developers are having publishing to the Google Play Store and another session about Desktop Linux together with our Gnome friends.

 

All in all a very productive unconference. We encourage KDE mentors to take the opportunity to attend the Google Summer of Code Mentor Summit next year, it's a great experience! 

 

[1] me and Albert Vaca, people were moderately amused that both of us had the same name, contribute to the same community and are from the same city.

Disable the Plasma Morphing Popups effect (at least on X11)

If you're using Plasma/KWin 6 i suggest you disable the Morphing Popups effect, it has been removed for Plasma 6.2 https://invent.kde.org/plasma/kwin/-/commit/d6360cc4ce4e0d85862a4bb077b8b3dc55cd74a7 and on X11 at least it causes severe redraw issues with tooltips in Okular (and i would guess elsewhere).

KDE Gear 24.08 branches created

Make sure you commit anything you want to end up in the KDE Gear 24.08
releases to them

Next Dates  

• July 25, 2024: 24.08 Freeze and Beta (24.07.80) tag & release
• August  8, 2024: 24.08 RC (24.07.90) Tagging and Release
• August 15, 2024: 24.08 Tagging
• August 22, 2024: 24.08 Release

https://community.kde.org/Schedules/KDE_Gear_24.08_Schedule

KDE Gear 24.08 release schedule

 

This is the release schedule the release team agreed on

  https://community.kde.org/Schedules/KDE_Gear_24.08_Schedule

Dependency freeze is in around 4 weeks (July 18) and feature freeze one
after that. Get your stuff ready!
 

Help wanted! Port KDE Frameworks oss-fuzz builds to Qt6/KF6

If you're looking for an isolated and straightforward way to start contributing to KDE, you're in the right place. At KDE, we use fuzzing via oss-fuzz to try to ensure our libraries are robust against broken inputs. Here's how you can help us in this essential task.

What is Fuzzing?

Fuzzing involves feeding "random" [1] data into our code to check its robustness against invalid or unexpected inputs. This is crucial for ensuring the security and stability of applications that process data without direct user control.

Why is Fuzzing Important?

Imagine receiving an image via email, saving it to your disk, and opening it in Dolphin. This will make Dolphin create a thumbnail of the image. If the image is corrupted and our image plugin code isn't robust, the best-case scenario is that Dolphin crashes. In the worst case, it could lead to a security breach. Hence, fuzzing helps prevent such vulnerabilities.

How You Can Help:

We need to update the build of KDE libraries in oss-fuzz to use Qt6. This task could be challenging because it involves static compilation and ensuring the correct flags are passed for all compilation units.

Steps to Contribute:

1. Start with karchive Project
   

   • Download oss-fuzz and go into the karchive subfolder.
   • Update the Dockerfile to download Qt from the dev branch and KDE Frameworks from the master branch.

2. Update build.sh Script:

   • Modify the build.sh script to compile Qt6 (this will be harder since it involves moving from qmake to cmake) and KDE Frameworks 6.

3. Check karchive_fuzzer.cc:

   • This file might need updates, but they should be relatively easy.
   • At the top of karchive_fuzzer.cc, you'll find a comment with the three commands that oss-fuzz runs. Use these to test the image building, fuzzer building, and running processes.

Need Help?

If you have questions or need assistance, please contact me at aacid@kde.org or ping me on Matrix at @tsdgeos:kde.org

Note:

[1] Smart fuzzing engines don't generate purely random data. They use semi-random and semi-smart techniques to efficiently find issues in the code.

KDE Goals April 2024 sprint

A few weeks ago I attended the KDE Goals April 2024 sprint

I was there as part of the Automation & Systematization sprint given my involvement in the release process, the "not very automatized" weekly emails about the status of CI about KDE Gear and KDE Frameworks, etc. but I think that maybe I was there more as "person that has been around a long time, ask me if you have questions about things that are documented through oral tradition"

I didn't end up doing lots of work on sprint topics themselves (though I participated in various discussions, did a bit of pair-programming with Aleix on QML accessibility issues, inspired DavidR to do the QML-text-missing-i18n check that he describes in his blog); instead I cheated a bit and used the sprint to focus on some of the KDE stuff I had a bit on my backlog, creating the KDE Gear release/24.05 branches and lots of MR reviewing and more!

Thanks KDE e.V. for sponsoring the trip, if you would like such events to continue please we need your continued donations

And remember Akademy talk submission period ends in 10 days, send your talk now!

Send your talks for Akademy NOW!

Akademy 2024 (the annual world summit for KDE) is happening in Würzburg, Saturday 7th – Thursday 12th September. (I hope you knew that)

First of all, if you're reading this and thinking, "Should i go to Akademy?" 

The answer is [most probably] YES! Akademy has something for everyone, be it coders, translators, promoters, designers, enthusiasts, etc.

Now, with this out of the way, one of the many things that makes Akademy is the talks on the weekend, and you know who has something to say? *YOU*

Yes, *YOU*. I'm sure you've been working on something interesting, or have a great idea to share.

*YOU* may think that your idea is not that great or the things you work on are not interesting, but that's seldomly the case when someone explains me their "boring" thing they've been working on, i always think "Wow that's great".

Ok, so now that I've convinced you to send a talk proposal, when better than *TODAY* to send it?

Yes I know the Call for Participation is open until the 24 of May, but by sending it today you make sure you don't forget sending it later and also [more important for me] you help those of us in the Program Committee not to worry when the final date starts approaching and we don't have lots of talks yet because you all prefer sending talks on the very last minute.

So stop reading and send your talk today ;-)

KDE Gear 24.05 branches created

Make sure you commit anything you want to end up in the KDE Gear 24.05
releases to them

Next Dates

• April 25 2024: 24.05 Freeze and Beta (24.04.80) tag & release
• May 9, 2024: 24.05 RC (24.04.90) Tagging and Release
• May 16, 2024: 24.05 Tagging
• May 23, 2024: 24.05 Release

https://community.kde.org/Schedules/KDE_Gear_24.05_Schedule

Plucker/Palm support removed from Okular for 24.05

We recently remove the Plucker/Palm support in Okular, because it was unmaintained and we didn't even find [m]any suitable file to test it.

If you are using it, you have a few months to step up and bring it back, if not, let's have it rest.

KDE Gear 24.02 branches created

Make sure you commit anything you want to end up in the KDE Gear 24.02 releases to them

Next Dates:

•    January 31: 24.02 RC 2 (24.01.95) Tagging and Release
•   February 21: 24.02 Tagging
•   February 28: 24.02 Release

https://community.kde.org/Schedules/February_2024_MegaRelease