Le 7 août 2025 09:45:04 GMT+02:00, [email protected] a écrit :
>Hi everyone,
Dear Fred,
>Simple question, will KDE Plasma 6.3.6 ship in Debian 13? Thanks to
>tracker.debian.org, I know that plasma-desktop moved to "Debian testing watch"
>on 2025-07-26 but nothing new since. Is it blocked because of the full freeze?
Quick answer is : yes.
Long answer :
- The plasma-desktop package is only a small bit of what upstream ships as «
plasma », have a look at [1] to get an idea.
- For trixie we ship all 67 upstream plasma packages covering desktop and
mobile environments.
- All packages were uploaded up to 6.3.4, then only packages with actual code
changes for 6.3.5 and 6.3.6 since it required a lot more process on our side at
that stage of the freeze. [2] has most of the relevant information about what
we did for trixie.
- I've tried reviewing all recent plasma changelogs (so from the 6.4 series)
and plasma weekly summaries for changes that have a sufficient benefit / risk
ratio and backported them for trixie. So for example plasma-desktop currently
has 20 post-6.3 commits backported [3] and the same is true for several other
packages.
- A better way to get a global picture of where we are is the DDPO dashboard
for the team [4].
\\\ HELP WANTED ///
As everyone may guess this is a lot of work and the team is stretched thin so
help is always welcome. On the top of my mind we need help on :
- Packaging. There are 70~ framework packages (x2 for trixie where we ship KF5
& KF6), 67 plasma packages, more than 200 Gear packages IIRC. Gear is an easier
entry to the game since most packages are independent. Gear 25.08 is around the
corner so that's a good opportunity to try updating your favourite app !
Frameworks and Plasma need to be uploaded as a set so require more investment,
but help is also welcome there.
- Bug triaging : reviewing existing bug reports on our packages, trying to
reproduce, closing them if clearly fixed, flagging them moreinfo +
unreproducible when unreproducible when in doubt, closing those already flagged
moreinfo that have seen no activity after let's say a year.
- Identify issues in stable that have a known fix that would deserve a backport
on the whole stack (Frameworks, Plasma, Gear). Test these backports and ensure
we don't break stable. A reminder to everyone *NOT TO* open bug reports in the
upstream KDE bug tracker for the packages we have in trixie/stable since the
versions we ship are out of upstream support. You should only report upstream
issues that are reproducible in their latest major version (Plasma 6.4,
Frameworks 6.16 and Gear 25.04 at the time of the writing). Otherwise we're on
our own for identifying and backporting fixes to Debian.
- Improve our tooling [5] and related documentation [6], [7]. One of the core
parts of our automation is the cmake_update_deps.py script that parses cmake
files to convert upstream dependencies to Debian package build dependencies,
and it would need some love (implement cmake "if" conditions, supports for
multiple variable expansions in the same string, automatic management of
arch-conditions for packages depending on webengine for ex.). Improving the
other tools to automate and simplify the process more would also be useful.
- … other things you'd like to see. 🙂
Fortunately you have all the forky cycle (~2 years) to make that happen so
now's the right time to jump in ! 🎈🎉
We have both the pkg-kde-talk [8] mailing list for discussions and many of us
hang out on #debian-qt-kde IRC channel on OFTC (reachable via a matrix bridge).
[1] <https://kde.org/announcements/changelogs/plasma/6/6.2.5-6.3.0/>
[2] <https://wiki.debian.org/PkgQtKde/TrixieReleasePlans>
[3]
<https://salsa.debian.org/qt-kde-team/kde/plasma-desktop/-/tree/debian/4%256.3.6-1/debian/patches?ref_type=tags>
[4]
<https://qa.debian.org/developer.php?email=debian-qt-kde%40lists.debian.org&version=stable&ubuntu=0>
[5] <https://salsa.debian.org/qt-kde-team/pkg-kde-dev-scripts>
[6] <https://qt-kde-team.pages.debian.net/>
[7] <https://salsa.debian.org/qt-kde-team/qt-kde-team.pages.debian.net>
[8] <https://alioth-lists.debian.net/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/pkg-kde-talk>
Happy hacking !
--
Aurélien
