Plasma Pass 1.2.2

Plasma Pass is a Plasma applet for the Pass password manager

This release includes build fixes for Plasma 6, due to be released later this week.

URL: https://download.kde.org/stable/plasma-pass/
Sha256: 2a726455084d7806fe78bc8aa6222a44f328b6063479f8b7afc3692e18c397ce
Signed by E0A3EB202F8E57528E13E72FD7574483BB57B18D Jonathan Esk-Riddell <jr@jriddell.org>
https://jriddell.org/esk-riddell.gpg

Oxygen Icons 6 Released

Oxygen Icons is an icon theme for use with any XDG compliant app and desktop.

It is part of KDE Frameworks 6 but is now released independently to save on resources.

This 6.0.0 release requires to be built with extra-cmake-modules from KF 6 which is not yet released, distros may want to wait until next week before building it.

Distros which ship this version can drop the version released as part of KDE Frameworks 5.

sha256: 28ec182875dcc15d9278f45ced11026aa392476f1f454871b9e2c837008e5774

URL: https://download.kde.org/stable/oxygen-icons/

Signed by E0A3EB202F8E57528E13E72FD7574483BB57B18D Jonathan Esk-Riddell <jr@jriddell.org>
https://jriddell.org/esk-riddell.gpg

KDSOAP WS-Discovery Client 0.4.0

This project is creating a WS-Discovery client library based on the KDSoap library.

The name is short for Klarälvdalens Datakonsult AB Simple Object Access Protocol Web Services Addressing Discovery Client.

It is used by the SMB KIO worker from kio-extras.

kio-extras will have two releases as part of KDE’s 6th Megarelease, one for Qt 5 and one for Qt 6. Distros should build and ship both versions of kio-extras but the Qt5 build should use the internal static copy of kdsoap-ws-discovery-client so does not need to be built separately. The Qt 6 build of kio-extras does need this external build of kdsoap-ws-discovery-client. Distros will need an up to date copy of KDSoap library.

There are no changes compared to 0.3.0 but this one is released as stable ahead of KDE Gear 24.02.

SHA 256: 2cd247c013e75f410659bac372aff93d22d71c5a54c059e137b9444af8b3427a
URL: https://download.kde.org/stable/kdsoap-ws-discovery-client/
Signed by E0A3EB202F8E57528E13E72FD7574483BB57B18D Jonathan Esk-Riddell <jr@jriddell.org>
https://jriddell.org/esk-riddell.gpg

Ruqola 2.1 Beta

Ruqola 2.1 Beta (2.0.81) is available for packaging and testing.

Ruqola is a chat app for Rocket.chat. This beta release will build with the current release candidate of KDE Frameworks 6 and KTextAddons allowing distros to start to move away from Qt 5.

URL: https://download.kde.org/unstable/ruqola/
SHA256: 2c4135c08acc31f846561b488aa24f1558d7533b502f9ba305be579d43f81b73

Signed by E0A3EB202F8E57528E13E72FD7574483BB57B18D Jonathan Esk-Riddell jr@jriddell.org
https://jriddell.org/esk-riddell.gpg

OpenUK’s 2024 New Year’s Honours List

It’s a pleasure to be on the OpenUK New Year’s Honours list for 2024. There’s some impressive names on there such as Richard Hughes of Packagekit and other projects at Red Hat, Colin Watson who was at Ubuntu with me and I see is now freelance, Mike McQuaid was previously of KDE but is now trying a startup with Mac packager Workbrew for Homebrew.

OpenUK run various activities for open tech in UK countries and KDE currently needs some more helpers for a stall at their State of Open Con in London on Feb 6 and 7 February, if you can help do get in touch.

KDE’s 6th releases will happen next month bringing with it the refresh of code and people that a new major version number can bring, I think KDE’s software in the coming year will continue to impress.

My life fell apart after some family loss last year so I’ve run away to the end of the world at Finesterre in Galicia in Spain for now, let me know if you’re in the area.

KTextAddons 1.5.3

KTextAddons is a library with Various text handling addons used by Ruqola and Kontact apps. It can be compiles for both Qt 5 and 6 and distros are advised to compile two builds for each until Ruqola is ported to Qt 6.

URL: https://download.kde.org/stable/ktextaddons/

SHA256: 8a52db8abfa8a9d68d2d291fb0f8be20659fd7899987b4dcafdf2468db0917dc

Changelog

  • Drop unused KXmlGui dependency
  • Adapt to new KConfigGroup API
  • As we exclude emojis we need to remove it from list and not exclude it
  • Use proxymodel when exclude emoticons were updated
  • Allow to exclude some specific emoticons (Need for ruqola)
  • Exclude mock engine => it’s for test
  • Remove generate pri support (removed in kf6)

KDiagram 3.0.1

KDiagram 3.0.1 is an update to our charting libraries which fixes a bug in the cmake path configuration. It also updates translations and removes some unused Qt 5 code.

URL: https://download.kde.org/stable/kdiagram/3.0.1/

sha256: 4659b0c2cd9db18143f5abd9c806091c3aab6abc1a956bbf82815ab3d3189c6d

Signed by E0A3EB202F8E57528E13E72FD7574483BB57B18D Jonathan Esk-Riddell jr@jriddell.org
https://jriddell.org/esk-riddell.gpg

XWayland Video Bridge 0.4

An updated stable release of XWayland Video Bridge is out now for packaging.

https://download.kde.org/stable/xwaylandvideobridge/

sha256 ea72ac7b2a67578e9994dcb0619602ead3097a46fb9336661da200e63927ebe6

Signed by E0A3EB202F8E57528E13E72FD7574483BB57B18D Jonathan Esk-Riddell <jr@jriddell.org>
https://jriddell.org/esk-riddell.gpg

Changes

  • Also skip the switcher
  • Do not start in an X11 session and opt out of session management

KDiagram 3.0.0

KDiagram is two powerful libraries (KChart, KGantt) for creating business diagrams.

Version 3.0.0 is now available for packaging.

It moves KDiagram to use Qt 6. It is co-installable with previous Qt 5 versions and distros may want to package both alongside each other for app compatibility.

URL: https://download.kde.org/stable/kdiagram/3.0.0/
SHA256: 6d5f53dfdd019018151c0193a01eed36df10111a92c7c06ed7d631535e943c21

Signed by E0A3EB202F8E57528E13E72FD7574483BB57B18D Jonathan Esk-Riddell jr@jriddell.org
https://jriddell.org/esk-riddell.gpg

KWeatherCore 0.8.0

KWeatherCore is a library to facilitate retrieval of weather information including forecasts and alerts.

0.8.0 is available for packaging now

URL: https://download.kde.org/stable/kweathercore/0.8.0/
SHA256: 9bcac13daf98705e2f0d5b06b21a1a8694962078fce1bf620dbbc364873a0efeS
Signed by E0A3EB202F8E57528E13E72FD7574483BB57B18D Jonathan Esk-Riddell <jr@jriddell.org>
https://jriddell.org/esk-riddell.gpg

This release moves the library to use Qt 6. It is not compatible with older Qt 5 versions of the library so should only be packaged when KWeather is released or in testing archives.

qqc2-breeze5-style 6 Alpha

qqc2-breeze5-style is a theme used by Plasma Mobile. This alpha release is a re-bundling of the Plasma/5.27 branch of qqc2-breeze-style. It is for use by distros shipping alpha releases of Plasma 6 so that Qt 5 apps continue to be themed appropriately.

URL: https://download.kde.org/unstable/qqc2-breeze5-style/

SHA256: 813f9da4861567e70d1eccf3a3a092d802ac9475a91070fb47fa
8766f3c1e310

Signed by E0A3EB202F8E57528E13E72FD7574483BB57B18D Jonathan Esk-Riddell <jr@jriddell.org>
https://jriddell.org/esk-riddell.gpg

Oxygen Icons 6 Alpha Released

Oxygen Icons is an icon theme for use with any XDG compliant app and desktop.

It is part of KDE Frameworks 6 but is now released independently to save on resources.

This is the first (and likely only) pre-release, versioned 5.245.0, and it will have a stable release alongside KDE Frameworks 6 in February.

Distros which ship this version can drop the version released as part of KDE Frameworks 5.

sha256: b082a1a9a6d06cdeee2863555951609e95dd499f133035d04719a16f8500497f

URL: https://download.kde.org/unstable/oxygen-icons/

Signed by E0A3EB202F8E57528E13E72FD7574483BB57B18D Jonathan Esk-Riddell <jr@jriddell.org>
https://jriddell.org/esk-riddell.gpg

KDSOAP WS-Discovery Client 0.3.0

This project is trying to create a WS-Discovery client library based on the KDSoap
library.

The name is short for Klarälvdalens Datakonsult AB Simple Object Access Protocol Web Services Addressing Discovery Client

It is used by the SMB KIO worker from kio-extras.

kio-extras will have two releases as part of KDE’s 6th Megarelease, one for Qt 5 and one for Qt 6. Distros should build and ship both versions of kio-extras but the Qt5 build should use an internal static copy of kdsoap-ws-discovery-client so does not need to be built separately. The Qt 6 build of kio-extras does need this external build of kdsoap-ws-discovery-client. Distros will need an up to date copy of KDSoap library https://github.com/KDAB/KDSoap/tags.

SHA 256: 5007747f1ce607639bb63244f8894c03a15194c0a891b8d85e10d76dbdf79188
URL: https://download.kde.org/unstable/kdsoap-ws-discovery-client/
Signed by E0A3EB202F8E57528E13E72FD7574483BB57B18D Jonathan Esk-Riddell <jr@jriddell.org>
https://jriddell.org/esk-riddell.gpg

KUserFeedback 1.3.0

KUserFeedback is a library for collecting user feedback for apps via telemetry and surveys.
Version 1.3.0 is now available for packaging.

This version adds the option to build it for Qt 6. It can also be built for Qt 5 and distros may want to package it twice, however this will mean handling some overlapping files and most apps which use it will be ported to Qt 6 as part of the KDE 6 MegaReleases in February so distros may prefer to drop Qt 5 builds then.

sha256 252308b822dd4690ea85ab1688c9b0da5512978ac6b435f77a5979fc1d2ffd13

URL https://download.kde.org/stable/kuserfeedback/

Signed by E0A3EB202F8E57528E13E72FD7574483BB57B18D Jonathan Esk-Riddell <jr@jriddell.org>
https://jriddell.org/esk-riddell.gpg

* new release 1.3
* Add CC0-1.0 license
* Do not look for QtHelp if docs are disabled
* Remove unneeded setting of CMake policies, implied by requiring 3.16
* Add flatpak CI
* Bump minimum cmake version to 3.16
* Add explicit moc includes to sources for moc-covered headers
* Remove Designer&#39;s &quot;.&quot; normaloff file data from icon properties in .ui files
* Use latest-kf6 branch for Qt6
* In qt6 plugin name is KUserFeedbackQmlQt6
* PHP 8 compatibility
* Fix Qt 6 build of PHP-dependent unit tests
* categoryaggregationmodel
* Fix include form (use &quot;&quot; instead of &lt;&gt;) for provider.h
* Remove forward declaration as include is already defined
* Fix debug message
* Autogenerate debug categories
* Create logging_p.cpp directly
* Fix show headers in qtc6
* Compatibility is not necessary now
* kuserfeedback_version.h was not installed
* Fix compatibility (install temporary include in KUserFeedBack too)
* Add warning about removing compatibility
* Show all headers in includes
* KUserFeedbackConsole is an internal static lib too
* Not necessary here as it&#39;s an internal static lib
* Fix install target file
* Allow to co-install
* Port to new syntax
* Add Qt 6 Android CI
* typos–
* Add Qt6 windows CI support
* Hide finding docs dependencies behind ENABLE_DOCS
* Install translations
* qtversionsource: fix Qt 6.5 build
* avoid invalid lastX times
* .gitlab-ci.yml: enable static builds
* add it to CI qt6 bsd
* Fix cmakename in metainfo.yaml
* Tell no data has been sent if no data has been sent
* Give the dialog an actual title
* Remove duplicate header between cpp/h files
* Add windows CI

libqaccessibilityclient 0.5.0

libqaccessibilityclient 0.5.0 is out now. The release adds Qt 6 support. libqaccessibilityclient is used by KMag and KWin both of which have forthcoming releases that are ported to Qt 6 so there should be no need for distros to build two versions.

https://download.kde.org/stable/libqaccessibilityclient/libqaccessibilityclient-0.5.0.tar.xz

Signed by E0A3EB202F8E57528E13E72FD7574483BB57B18D Jonathan Esk-Riddell <jr@jriddell.org>
https://jriddell.org/esk-riddell.gpg

* new release: new version and new ECM URL
* Bump min required Qt6 to 6.5
* Port away from deprecated operator+(Qt::Modifier modifier, Qt::Key key
* Port away from deprecated QVariant::Type
* Add explicit moc includes to sources for moc-covered headers
* Use ECMDeprecationSettings
* Have export macros header include version header (Qt6-only)
* Use QAccessibilityClient6 as package name for Qt6 version
* Use variable to hold CMake config name, also targets file name
* Install headers into QAccessibilityClient/ visibility layer
* Move version setup into src/ subdir
* Use generic target name for generated library
* Move library target property setting next to declaration
* Move CMake config template file into src/ subdir
* Remove unimplemented methods
* Use ECM master when building for Qt6
* Use CamelCase includes
* Fix finding the unit test helper executable
* Add FreeBSD Qt6 CI support
* Add Gitlab CI
* Remove duplicate header between cpp/h files
* We depend against qt5.15
* Use -qt6 when we build against qt6
* Fix find_package
* Fix signals
* Adapt build system for building against qt6
* It&#39;s already define in ecm
* Make compile with strict compile flags
* Make building without deprecated methods
* Fix some compile error
* Add CI definitions information for seed job
* Use more target-centric cmake code
* Use GenerateExportHeader
* Remove module prefixe from Qt includes
* Do not use deprecate QFlatgs(nullptr) constructor
* Fix member init order to match definition order
* Clean up include dirs
* Convert license statements to SPDX expressions
* Add support for AccessibleId property
* Update README.md a bit
* Support API documentation generation with kapidox
* Remove the references to projects.kde.org
* Fix qstring minor optimization
* Port setMargins
* Use only undeprecated KDEInstallDirs variables
* KDECMakeSettings already cares for CMAKE_AUTOMOC and BUILD_TESTING
* Fix use in cross compilation
* Q_ENUMS -> Q_ENUM
* more complete release instructions

Phonon 4.12.0 and Phonon-VLC 0.12.0

Phonon 4.12.0 and Phonon-VLC (phonon-backend-vlc) have new releases today which add Qt 6 support. These tars will by default build Qt 5 and 6 at the same time and we advise distros to ship both builds.

Phonon GStreamer (phonon-backend-gstreamer) is deprecated and we do not advise to use it.

https://community.kde.org/Phonon/Releases/Core/4.12.0

URLhttp://download.kde.org/stable/phonon/4.12.0/phonon-4.12.0.tar.xz.mirrorlist
SHA2563287ffe0fbcc2d4aa1363f9e15747302d0b080090fe76e5f211d809ecb43f39a

Changes

  • Future-proof build fix for clang > 16
  • Allow build against Qt6 when also built against Qt5
  • Mark Qt6Core5Compat as REQUIRED for Qt6 builds
  • let the user opt out of qt 5 or 6 builds
  • bring back includes dir
  • build qt5 and 6 at the same time
  • be explicit about default values
  • fix build for qt6
  • Omit legacy CMake variables when building with Qt 6
  • fix build with clang-16
  • Don’t install legacy includes when building against Qt 6
  • Allow to build against last kf6
  • Add Windows Qt 6 CI
  • Update the translations folder name
  • Don’t redefine CMAKE_MODULE_PATH
  • .gitlab-ci.yml: enable static builds
  • Port away from deprecated INSTALL_TARGETS_DEFAULT_ARGS
  • Add FreeBSD Qt6 CI support
  • We depend against qt5.15 now
  • Add Windows CI
  • Add Android Qt5 and Qt6 CI
  • Take out empty deprecated registerMetaTypes() method in Qt6 builds
  • We need const char * (make compile qt6 apps)
  • Qt::AA_UseHighDpiPixmaps is enabled by default in qt6
  • Add Qt5 and Qt6 Linux CI
  • Fix the Qt6 build
  • Fix phonon lib name
  • Fix coding style + increase ecm
  • Adapt build system for building against qt6
  • Adapt code for building against qt6
  • Make it compiles without deprecated methods
  • Add KDE CI configuration for Phonon
  • Fix typos found by codespell
  • Update IRC network name in Doxygen main page
  • Allow to compile with unity support
  • Port away from deprecated Qt methods
  • Remove module prefixes from Qt includes
  • Port away from deprecated QList::swap(i, j)
  • Port away from deprecated qVariantFromValue()
  • Use Q_DECLARE_OPERATORS_FOR_FLAGS in same namespace as flags definition
  • Use more nullptr
  • Improve metainfo.yaml
  • Use NO_POLICY_SCOPE with KDECompilerSettings
  • Remove explicit use of ECM_KDE_MODULE_DIR, is part of ECM_MODULE_PATH
  • Remove “virtual” where “override” is used; add missing virtual in destructors
  • Revert “Port deprecated qVariantFromValue method”
  • Port deprecated qVariantFromValue method
  • bump to 4.11.1 for release
  • Remove phonon from the include directory
  • throw out the qml demo
  • import gpl2 for new settings source code
  • Reorder cmake macro includes

https://community.kde.org/Phonon/Releases/VLC/0.12.0

URLhttps://download.kde.org/stable/phonon/phonon-backend-vlc/0.12.0/phonon-backend-vlc-0.12.0.tar.xz.mirrorlist
SHA256338479dc451e4b94b3ca5b578def741dcf82f5c626a2807d36235be2dce7c9a5

Changes

  • drop support for libvlc 2.x
  • support qt5/6 multibuild
  • mediaobject new can throw but does not return null
  • .gitignore ignore /compile_commands.json
  • Add Linux Qt 5 CI
  • Update the translations folder name
  • Remove explicit use of ECM_KDE_MODULE_DIR, is part of ECM_MODULE_PATH
  • Make compile against qt6
  • Add override keyword + use nullptr
  • Show all headers in qtc6
  • Adapt build system for building against qt6
  • Use Qt::end
  • Remove obsolete include
  • Use override keyword
  • Use QStringLiteral (QLAtin1String is deprecated)
  • Use Q_SIGNALS/Q_SLOTS
  • Fix typos found by codespell
  • debug vmem format setup
  • use picture_t to calculate pitch lines
  • Update the obsolete projects.kde.org URL
  • Revert “Port deprecated QLatin1Literal -> QLatin1String”
  • Port deprecated QLatin1Literal -> QLatin1String
  • preliminary vlc4 port
  • only set xwindow when the qt platform actually is xcb (on unix)

Signed by E0A3EB202F8E57528E13E72FD7574483BB57B18D Jonathan Esk-Riddell <jr@jriddell.org>
https://jriddell.org/esk-riddell.gpg

OpenUK Awards 2023 Open for Nominations

The OpenUK Awards are open for nominations for 2023.

Awards timetable

  • Nominations open 28th July 2023
  • Nominations close midnight UK 19th September 2023 (this will not be extended)
  • Shortlist of up to 3 nominees per category announced 18th October 2023
  • Winners Announced 20th November 2023: Black Tie Awards Ceremony and dinner at House of Lords sponsored by Lord Vaizey, 6-10.30pm, tickets limited 

Self nominations are very welcome. If you know fit into the categories or have a project or company which does or know anyone else who does then fill in the form and say why it’s deserved. You might get fame and glory or at the least a dinner in the house of lords.

Getting KDE Apps to our Users

Some time ago, before the world locked down, I pondered that KDE wasn’t very good at getting our apps to our users. We didn’t even have a website that listed our apps with download links. If you were an open source app developer using our tech (Qt and KDE Frameworks) would you come into KDE to build your app or just start a project on Github and do it yourself? KDE has community which means some people to help look over your work and maybe contribute and translate and some promo and branding mindshare and there’s teams of people in the distros who specialise in packaging our stuff. But successful projects like Krita and Digikam and indeed my own Plasma release scripts still have to do a lot on top of what KDE communally gives them.

So I launched apps.kde.org and made the All About the Apps goal which was selected in the hope of getting KDE to support taking our apps to the users more slickly. I didn’t manage to make much progress with the goal which I will readily take the blame for. After some fighting I managed to get our announcements linking to the app stores directly but I didn’t manage to get much else slicker.

What my dream still is would be for apps to have a button that…

  • Bumps the version number in the source
  • Makes the tar and uploads it to a secret place
  • Tells the Linux distros to package it
  • Packaging for Windows/Mac/Android/Snap/Flatpak/Appimage would be in the Git repo and our CI would now build them and upload to the relevant test sites
  • OpenQA style tests would be in the git repo and our CI would now test these packages
  • Another button would make the source and packages public in Microsoft Store/Appimagehub/SnapStore/Flathub/download.kde.org and somehow tells the Linux distros and send the announce to the Discuss group and start off a blog post for you

I just released KDE ISO Image Writer (another project I didn’t make much progress with for too many years) and had a chance to see how it all felt

There’s no nice buttons and while we have a tool to make the tar and I have a tool to add the release to the AppStream file, there’s nothing to bump version numbers in cmake or add releases to AppStream or make templates for pre-announcements and announcements.

How’s the packaging and app store situation?

Windows and Microsoft Store

I had to go out and buy a laptop for this, there’s virtual machines available for free which should work but I didn’t trust them with the hardware needed here and they’re time limited so I’m a bit wary of setting up Craft then having to do it again when the time runs out. Craft does a lot of the hard work building for Windows and binary-factory and elite Craft dev hvonreth is often around to give help.

Getting access to the Microsoft Store takes a sysadmin request and working out what to ask for then working out what to upload. I uploaded the wrong thing (a .appx file) when it should have been a .appxupload file and that seemed to break the MS Store from accepting it at all. After lots of twiddling and deleting and generally turning it off and on again I got it uploaded and a day later it was rejected with the claim that it crashed. While the app had installed and run fine for me locally using this .appxupload thing to install it locally did indeed cause it to crash. We diagnosed that to the elevated privileges needed and after some Googling it turns out the Microsoft Store doesn’t seem to support this at all. So my dream of having it available to install there has not worked out, but you can get the installer from download.kde.org and use that.

There’s still only 9 KDE apps on the MS Store at a quick “KDE” search which seems far too few.

AppImage

These have been around for decades and KDE has always had fans of this format (it used to be called Klik at one point e.g. test KOffice). SUSE devs were a big fan at one point. In recent years its gained auto-update, daemons to manage the system integration, build tools, support from top apps like Krita and Digikam and a centralised place to get it in AppimageHub (not to be confused with the other AppimageHub). And yet mass adoption seems as far off as ever.

There’s two ways I found to build it, with appimage-builder which was easy enough to pick up and make a packaging file which uses packages from Ubuntu and neon.

Or you can reuse Craft (used earlier for Windows) to build on Linux for the AppImage. This also allows binary-factory integration but I don’t seem to have got this working yet. It might also be worth exploring openSUSE’s OSB which might allow for other platforms.

I tried to upload it to AppimageHub but that broke the website which needed some back channel chats to fix. Once uploaded it appears shortly, no further bureaucracy needed (which is a bit scary). It doesn’t appear on the KDE Store which seems to be about themes and addons rather than apps. And I put it on download.kde.org.

It’s hard to know how popular AppImage is within KDE, neither of the AppImageHubs seem easy to search and many apps publish their own in various ways. There’s about a dozen (non-Maui) KDE apps with appimages on download.kde.org plus a dozen Maui apps which are developed within KDE and used by the Nitrux distro. I hear complains that AppImage doesn’t support Wayland which will limit them.

Flatpak and Flathub

This format has lots of good feels and mindshare because it integrates well with the existing open source communities.

The flatpak-manifest.json file can be added directly to the repo (which I’m very jealous of, when I suggested it for Snaps it was rejected and caused me to grump off the whole Goal) and that can be added to binary-factory but also to invent.kde.org CI. There’s an active team around to help out. That gets uploaded to a KDE testing repo where you can install and test.

But to get it out to the users there’s a separate process for Flathub the main host for Flatpak packages. That takes a another week or two of bureaucracy to get published (bureaucracy when publishing software for people to install is necessary and important). There’s also a stats website which suggests it has 300 installs.

Searching for KDE on Flathub gives over 130 results.

Snaps

This works the smoothest if I say so myself. Add the packaging to the snapcraft repo and it builds on the invent.kde.org CI which actually just sends it off to the launchpad builders and it builds for ARM and AMD64. Then you get one of the KDE Snapcraft team (Scarlett, me, Harald) to register it and voila it uploads to candidate channel for testing. It needs manually moved into the stable release channel which can either be done by our team or we can share admin rights. The bureaucracy comes when you need to ask for permissions such ISO Image Writer needing access to disks, that took a week to be accepted. The packages are build using KDE neon for Qt and KDE Frameworks etc and we’ve had troubles before when KDE neon moves onto new versions of Qt but the content Snap has stayed on older ones, but we’re working out when to save a spare snapshot of it. The build tool Snapcraft also has a kde-neon extension which just adds in common parts used by KDE snaps but sometimes that gets out of date too so we’ve had to work out ways around it.

The Snapcraft KDE page has about 140 apps. From the admin page I can see ISO Image Writer has 920 installs around the world (not bad for two days old). The store doesn’t seem great at picking up the AppStream meta data so screenshot and icons are often out of date which I’ve brought up with the devs a bunch of times. It’s centralised around a single Canonical owned store which open source/free software fans can find a bad smell but it is what users want.

Others

I’ve not looked at f-droid, Google Play, Chocolately, or Apple’s App Store. With the probable exception of Apple’s store we should embrace all of these.

I couldn’t find any tools to add release data (the files to download) to AppStream file which is what ends up on apps.kde.org, that feels like a low-hanging-fruit fix. Building pre-release tars which aren’t available publicly seems tricky to do, we have that for KDE neon but none of the app stores have it. Similarly tools to make templates for release announcements can’t be hard, I do that for Plasma already.

So lots of work still to do to make KDE have slick processes for getting our software out there to the users, it’s social and technical challenges and cultural shifts take a long time. Loads of people have put in lots of work to get us where we have today but still lots to do. If you’re up for a challenge and want to help I hope this blog shows the challenges and potential for fixing them rather than sounding too negative. Let’s keep KDE being All About the Apps!