[webkit-qt] Proposal: Qt 4 removal from trunk, Qt 5 changes

[Andrea Diamantini]

On Wednesday 09 May 2012 19:13:58 Alexis Menard wrote:
> I have some good questions :

I'll try to reply at my best, then :)

> - How often you plan to merge trunk back in that branch? Up-until
> when? When you will decide to branch? And will you maintain your trunk
> + the branch?

Given the decision to remove the qt4 bits from trunk, I think the best 
decision should be to stop merging back from trunk one commit before that :)
Then I can branch out from there the hypothetical "qtwebkit-2.3" branch on 
start the stabilization process.

> - How many releases you plan to do? Do you know how long it take to
> stabilize a fork to make a release?

Not sure about the number of releases. I was planning to release the branch in 
a couple of months from its branching and continue doing bugfixing there.

> - How long you plan to support this Qt4 based repo?

Until KDE will move to Qt5. 

> The proposal was not to remove WK1, it was to remove the Qt4 support.
> 
> We did a refresh for Qt 4.8 with Qt WebKit 2.2. I would say maybe
> doing a QtWebKit 2.3 make sense but after that I'm not sure it is
> worth the effort.
> 
> In a near future we will have to switch the bots to run Qt5 and make
> those default on build.webkit.org (as we are leading towards Qt 5.0),
> read, there will be no QA whatsoever on the trunk with Qt4 (unless you
> run you own bot instance on the private).

I obviously try building and running the tests locally before the push. Let's 
say that doing it locally is part of the "webkit dev learning process".

> So here is some proposal :
> 
> - Before the remove of Qt4 support (which is to be defined), integrate
> into your branch.
> - Add KDE features and maybe some other suggestions from the community.
> - Stabilize and fix (count a very good 6 months maybe more). In the
> meantime you should cherry pick security issues, and potential bug fix
> you are interested in.
> - Release QtWebKit 2.3.
> 
> Call it done.

Yes, this is basically what I was thinking. But for the six months period. Is 
a so loooong period really needed to stabilize all the code?

> Help us to improve QtWebKit for Qt 5 with WK2. By that time Qt 5.0
> will be out, plenty of time to hack on features/API and improvements.
> Maybe KDE Frameworks with Qt5 will be released (or on the way) so the
> kdewebkit could benefit from a newer API with WK2 (who knows).
> 
> What do you think?

Don't know where you are from. In Italy we have no more than 24 hours a day, 
sorry :D
More seriously, this qt4 port + rekonq development is involving me really a 
lot. When the qt4 experience will be definitely closed, I'll try to move and 
help a bit with WK/Qt5

> Thanks.

Thank you.

[snip]

-- 
Andrea Diamantini, adjam
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