VLC backend for Phonon 0.2.0

The VLC backend for Phonon is released!

You can download it from here:
http://download.kde.org/download.php?url=stable/phonon-backend-vlc/0.2.0/src/phonon-backend-vlc-0.2.0.tar.gz

33a1ca367989e306507ea633c99b8df5 phonon-backend-vlc-0.2.0.tar.gz

Thanks to all contributors and to the VLC developers.

What’s going on in Debian Qt world?

Qt 4.7.0 beta 2 and Qt Creator 2.0.0 have been released upstream. There’s some
noticeable changes in our Qt packages compared to Qt 4.6.x series:
- legacy Qt Assistant (ADP) is removed
- new Qt declarative module is introduced
- Qt Multimedia and Qt Webkit aren’t being built anymore

In case your package depends on the deprecated Qt Assistant, it is still being
shipped in a separated Qt Assistant compatibility package called
qt-assistant-compat.

Qt Multimedia is now shipped from Qt Mobility API instead of Qt. The module has
been renamed to Qt Mobility MultimediaKit. Qt Mobility delivers a set of APIs
for mobile device functionality.

Qt WebKit is shipped standalone, separated from Qt. Hopefully, it will make
Qt WebKit security support easier.

There are also a new component in the family: Qt Messaging Framework (QMF).
The Qt Messaging Framework, QMF, consists of a C++ library and daemon server
process that can be used to build email clients, and more generally software
that interacts with email and mail servers.

Finally, I have started to ship a snapshot of a new Phonon backend: Phonon VLC,
one backend to rule them all !

All the packages can be found in Debian Experimental repository, except
Qt Simulator, a simulator for Qt applications running on Nokia devices.
This package should land soon in Debian archives.

I encourage you to try building your Qt applications against these packages and
please, report any bugs you encounter.

Enjoy.

http://packages.qa.debian.org/q/qt4-x11.html
http://packages.qa.debian.org/q/qtcreator.html
http://packages.qa.debian.org/q/qt-assistant-compat.html
http://packages.qa.debian.org/q/qtmobility.html
http://packages.qa.debian.org/q/qtwebkit.html
http://packages.qa.debian.org/q/qmf.html
http://packages.qa.debian.org/p/phonon-backend-vlc.html
http://bugs.debian.org/cgi-bin/bugreport.cgi?bug=587759

Qt 4.6.0 beta 1 packages available on Debian experimental

Everything is in the title ;) I have uploaded Qt 4.6.0 beta 1 packages to Debian experimental. Amd64 and i386 packages are built (unfortunately, alpha and s390 architectures failed to build).If you wonder if KDE 4.3.2 is working with these packages, the short answer is yes.

if you wonder where you can find Debian packages for QtCreator (and more)

Since 2 months (7 weeks exactly), QtCreator is stuck in NEW queue … Until NEW queue is fixed, you can find the packages on Alioth:  http://alioth.debian.org/~fabo/ Bonus: kdevplatform is also waiting in NEW since ages, so … on Alioth. Sorry dear users to provides packages this way. Note on architectures : only amd64 and i386.

KDE 3.5.9 in Lenny

Ana started to spread the world with current discussions about which KDE in Lenny.

Let’s relay on Debian/KDE universe: you can follow the discussion here and participate if you care about Debian STABLE and KDE.

It is a hard decision and I gave my opinion. I think it is a good compromise between stability and bleeding edge stuff.

reply to KDE 4.1 experience

I don’t know if Peter tries KDE 4.1 beta1 (4.0.80) but I tend to disagree with some comments.

  •  you can’t configure size and appearance of the panel. This is a long-standing problem, but I thought it was fixed.

False. See the plasma icon on panel ? click on it and you’ll have what you want:

panel-configuration.png

  •  In general, there don’t appear to be all that many configuration options available to replicate various behaviors that I have become accustomed to.

Could be nice to be more verbose.

  •  Rendering problems in the system tray; icons appear on top of each other.

True, but it’s better with each release and not really a showstopper.

  •  Various kicker widgets don’t appear to be available for KDE 4

Which one do you want ?

  •  Most applications don’t copy their old settings, but it appears that some do?

Indeed. KDE3 uses .kde as home directory and KDE4 uses .kde4. It is intended to not break your KDE3 until we test upgrade path.

  • KMail doesn’t interact well with encrypted IMAP accounts. I didn’t try much beyond that, because I have no accounts that are not affected by that.
  • Clicking on an RSS link in Konqueror doesn’t link to Akregator anymore. Probably, various MIME type associations are missing.

I don’t know :) I continue to use Kontact from KDE3. Modestas and Sune have switched to kde4pim and they found it better than expected.

  • I couldn’t get the environment to remember to open terminal windows maximized. Very annoying.

Hmm It works for me. Konsole saves maximized/normal state.

  • I couldn’t add any application icons to the panel. I’m not sure where on is supposed to store one’s favorites now.

Make sure you unlock widgets with plasma icon on the top-right corner. Drag and drop from K-Menu to panel.

Sebas made a nice rough guide to plasma. Take a look !!!

  •  So when KDE 4 is actually usable, Debian will be ready. But not for lenny; that would be suicide in my opinion.

KDE4 is more than usable. It contains some glitches but we are far from sucide ;)

a look at KDE 4 and Debian

So far, if you want to use KDE 4 under Debian, you need to install them from experimental. Under the ground, we prepared up-to-date packages from trunk (soon uploaded) and I took a snapshot of my current desktop:

desktop

We didn’t know yet if Lenny will be shipped with KDE 4 but we hope it will be in good shape to have it. Everyday, improvements are done and the desktop is enough stable/solid to be used on a day to day basis.

On other side, I reported a bug on plasma panel alignment isn’t saved and some hours later, Marco Martin (mart) fixed the issue \o/

Tips: if you want to have a transparent panel, you need to enable compositing.

Qt 4.4.0 rc1 reached Debian Sid

Qt 4.4.0 rc1 was uploaded yesterday to unstable. It was previously available in experimental.

A rework of the packages was done :

  • Each Qt module has his own packages
  • Webkit and XmlPatterns are shipped
  • All sql drivers are provided as plugins
  • Examples and demos are shipped built (previously shipped as compressed sources)
  • Doxygen tagfile is generated/shipped

Qt4 is built on alpha, amd64, i386, ia64, powerpc, s390 and sparc architectures. On other architectures, the build is in progress. It failed to build on mips/mipsel so far.

And I confirm: Qt4.4.0 is a buildd killer. It needs 4x the time and double space:

| Automatic build of qt4-x11_4.4.0~rc1-2 on debian-31.osdl.marist.edu by sbuild/s390 98
[…]
> Build needed 04:19:38, 4733360k disk space

vs.

| Automatic build of qt4-x11_4.3.4-2 on lxdebian.bfinv.de by sbuild/s390 98
[…]
| Build needed 01:14:03, 2221884k disk space

Enjoy !

CDBS and .install files or RTFM

Ian, you could have saved time by reading CDBS Documentation.

Another useful variable is DEB_DH_INSTALL_ARGS.
DEB_DH_INSTALL_ARGS := --sourcedir=debian/tmp

While I’m at some CDBS documentation sharing, to pass LDFLAGS using CDBS way:
DEB_CONFIGURE_SCRIPT_ENV += LDFLAGS="-Wl, --no-undefined -Wl,--as-needed"

You can look at the online CDBS gallery website.

Nokia to acquire Trolltech !!!

Wow, probably the news of the day for me.

It’s done and not a joke:

http://trolltech.com/28012008/28012008

What’s next now ?

When you know Nokia and their consumer electronic product like the N810 uses maemo and mobile phones use Symbian,

do they want to switch to Qtopia :)

How KDE will be affected ? Everybody know the relations between Trolltech and KDE.

Enough speculations, This is really exciting !