Schedules/KDE4/4.0 Release Schedule

All dates given here are subject to revision, but we will try our best to stick to them if possible. The KDE Technical Working Group is acting as release coordinator for the 4.0 releases

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Already released

Technical Preview 1

Date: August 2006
Release date of the first technical preview, a developer release.

Technical Preview 2

Date: November 2006
Release date of the second technical preview, a developer release.

Technical Preview 3

Date: February 2007
Release date of the third technical preview, a developer release.

The kdelibs API will remain as stable as possible after that, so that application developers (in particular those not having their code in the KDE SVN) can start porting towards a stable kdelibs API.

Of course the applications in the KDE SVN will have been ported all along, and it will possible to alpha-test them at this stage.

Upcoming releases

Milestone: Subsystem Freeze

Date: 1 April 2007
Goals:

• From this date forward, no major KDE subsystem can be committed to kdelibs.
• The location of all classes are fixed within kdelibs
• Trunk is expected to contain KDE4 code only now. This effectively means that all scripts processing translations for KDE3 in trunk will cease.
• Extragear applications that want to release based on KDE3 are expected to move to /branches/stable and work from there.
• The buildsystem requirements are fixed; i.e, must not require a version of cmake greater than 2.4.5.

Milestone: Alpha Release + kdelibs soft API Freeze

Date: 1 May 2007
Goals:

• Qt 4.3 is required from here until release.
• The kdelibs API is frozen. This means that the classes and interfaces are not allowed to change, except with permission of the core developers.
• To make an API change, post a kdelibs API exception request to the kde-core-devel mailinglist with an explanation and the code. If there are no objections after a week, the change can be committed.

Note: all affected modules must continue to compile and work as expected.

Milestone: Feature Freeze

Date: 1 June 2007
Goals:

• The KDE main modules are frozen for new features.
• No new features are allowed, the focus is on stabilizing the applications and fixing all bugs.
• The main module maintainers must indicate if they will follow the release schedule or will divert and not be released together with KDE 4.0.

Milestone: Beta Cycle, Full kdelibs API Freeze

Start: 25 June 2007
End: 24 September 2007
Duration: 3 months (estimated)
Goals:

• From this date forward, a Beta Version will be published every month until most grave bugs are resolved.
• The kdelibs API is now frozen solid.
• Translations are included starting with the second Beta, thus beginning a string freeze. Exceptions can be requested on the kde-i18n mailinglist.

Milestone: Release Candidate Cycle

Start: 25 September 2007
End: 22 October 2007
Duration: 4 weeks (estimated)
Goals:

• From this date forward, a Release Candidate will be released every two weeks until *all* grave bugs are resolved.
• After the first Release Candidate there is a total release freeze. This means only regressions (breakage caused due to the KDE4 port) or grave bugs can be fixed, but nothing else.
• With the first Release Candidate, a list of languages which will be included with the KDE 4.0 release will be made available, based on the usual rules.

Milestone: KDE 4.0 Released

Date: 23 October 2007
Goals:

• This date is based on an estimated 3 Beta's and 2 Release Candidates.