HEADS UP: KDE/Qt update intentions in Fedora 13 (RFC)

[Lars Seipel]

On Sunday 24 October 2010 20:24:30 Kalev Lember wrote:
> KDE is pretty much self contained, whereas a Qt upgrade affects a much
> larger number of packages. I don't think updating Qt to a new major
> version in a stable Fedora release is a good idea; it just causes too
> much churn.

Nokia managed to upgrade Qt to 4.7 in their Maemo distribution and it got 
pushed to all devices without causing any problems so far. Their standards for 
avoiding churn are pretty high and their update scheme is extremely 
conservative for stable releases. Nevertheless they updated Qt. But they have 
a pretty good reason for doing that (aligning with future versions of MeeGo 
and Symbian). So what does a F13 user gain from an upgrade? Is it worth the 
risks?

F13 isn't what bleeding-edge users are likely to run in the future. Those can 
easily upgrade to F14 and enjoy the latest stuff. So it's not like they are 
forced to run a periodical broken rawhide with no security support if they 
want recent software. I like the idea of Fn getting major updates whereas Fn-1 
(that's what F13 is very soon) only gets those updates which are needed for 
fixing bugs and security issues.

So if the open issues regarding QtWebkit can be solved I agree that leaving Qt 
at 4.6.x is just fine.  If not there ain't much choice as it is pretty much 
guaranteed that Webkit will have security issues which are mandatory to fix. If 
upstream only supports 4.7 and backporting isn't an option (which seems to be 
the case according to jreznik) Qt 4.6 has to go unless some other solution can 
be implemented before F13 goes EOL. ;)

Lars