As mentioned previously we have been looking at organizing a sprint to define the goals for KDE Frameworks 6. We now have a date and time for this: November 22-24, at the MBition office in Berlin!

What is this about?

The goal of this sprint is to determine what we actually want to achieve for KF6 beyond just porting to Qt6 and dropping deprecated stuff. We have already collected a number of ideas on the KF6 Workboard, but a lot of this is still very high level and could use a much more detailed analysis and breakdown.

To make the sprint as effective as possible, please keep adding topics to the workboard. Of particular interest are of course changes that we can only effectively do with an ABI break, where the KF6 transition is thus the only opportunity in a multi-year period. Besides API fixes or modernization this could also cover things like:

Separation between abstraction and platform implementation.

Decoupling from a specific platform or implementation (e.g. making things relevant for mobile usable without QtWidget dependencies, or reducing D-Bus use outside of Linux).

Close ties to legacy technologies (e.g. our emoji code stuck at pre-Unicode emoji times).

Non-ideal class locations (e.g. a very widely used class being in a high-tier framework).

(Desktop) UI code where it shouldn’t be (e.g. implicit error handling with message boxes).

Components that are only still around for historic reasons and meanwhile has been superseded by newer code in e.g. Qt.

Second class QML bindings that could benefit from moving to their corresponding framework.

Identifying the specific places we need to look at for those (or other) considerations would be very helpful.

Should I join?

If you are asking yourself this question the answer is most likely yes :)

In particular this is relevant for:

KDE Frameworks contributors.

People working on non-Linux and/or non-desktop platforms.

Application or workspace developers making use of KDE Frameworks, or wanting to use KDE Frameworks.

The latter is particularly important in my view, as Frameworks are pretty pointless if they aren’t support the applications people want to build with it. Or the other way around, this is a good opportunity to influence the platform you build your applications on.

And if you know people you think should be there, please help to spread the word and encourage them to participate!

How do I join?

Subscribe to the KF6 Sprint task on Phabricator and add yourself to the sprint wiki page. That’s also where you find information about the location, suggested accommodations, times, travel cost reimbursement, etc. as soon as they become available over the coming days.

Thanks!

Meetings like this are immensely productive and help us making big steps forward. They are however only possible thanks to logistical and financial support, which in this case we are getting from Akademy sponsor MBition in form of the venue and by KDE e.V. for the travel cost. If you want to help with such activities in the future as well, providing venues for sprints is always welcome, and so are donations to the KDE e.V. of course!