Being Current

By einar

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It is not news that openSUSE, through to the effort of the openSUSE community KDE team, offers several third-party repositories for those who want the latest software from KDE. Since a while, stable releases were offered in the KDE:Release:4x repositories, created with every major release of KDE software. These were meant to offer the latest and greatest to the users without having them to track KDE:Distro:Factory, which is instead used to track packaging for the next openSUSE release and is more in a state of flux.

Then there are repositories which offer additional applications outside the main openSUSE KDE desktop packages, KDE:Extra (for stable releases) and KDE:Unstable:Extra (for development snapshots). In this case, they complement the already existing KDE repositories.

Given the rapid pace of development from KDE, which switched to 4 month based releases, this setup has shown some limits: the KDE:Extra and KDE:Unstable:Extra repositories would need to be built against each of the KDE:Release:4x ones, draining a lot of the build power available to the Open Build Service, and also maintenance was problematic, due to the number of repositories involved and the limited manpower at disposal of the openSUSE community KDE team.

This is why we’re announcing a change today: effective with the 4.12.4 release from KDE, the KDE:Release:4x repositories will be retired, replaced by a single resource which tracks the latest stable release from KDE, KDE:Current. This approach will greatly reduce the number of repositories to track and ease maintenance a great deal. KDE:Extra and KDE:Unstable:Extra will also be adjusted to offer KDE:Latest as build targets (and removing KR4x as well), with the net effect of saving a lot of OBS build power.

Of course, KDE:Current will include 4.13 packages once the official release is out.

Therefore, if you are a user of KDE:Release:4x, be aware that from tomorrow (at the same time as the 4.12.4 release)the repository will _cease to exist _and you should move to KDE:Current.

For questions and suggestions, feel free to drop by the #opensuse-kde channel on Freenode, or use the openSUSE KDE mailing list.

This post was brought to you by the bright (?) minds of the openSUSE community KDE team, with particular thanks to Raymond “tittiatcoke” Wooninck, who did most of the work

P.S.: No, this is not an April Fools’ joke. ;)

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