I have a quick question about branches in TDE repos. I see that at the moment repositories have two primary development branches: master and r14.1.x. My understanding is that the former is used to provide PTB, while the latter provides PSB.
What I would like to know is the development flow. Is the primary development happening on master and then changes are selectively cherry-picked to r14.1.x? What is a logical distinction between master and r14.1.x? From my work in other projects, I would expect that a branch such as r14.1.x will only receive bugfixes, while master will be used as a base for new release branches in the future. That is not how things seem to work in TDE though. Looking at the commits, r14.1.x seems to receive both new features and bugfixes and it seems as if all (?) of the development made on master eventually makes it to r14.1.x. This makes me confused about the intended purpose of the master branch.
Also, is there any tentative roadmap for TDE? Is the plan to just continue working on r14.1.x, or are there plans for r14.2.x somewhere down the line?
Cheers, Janek
Hi Janek,
I have a quick question about branches in TDE repos. I see that at the moment repositories have two primary development branches: master and r14.1.x. My understanding is that the former is used to provide PTB, while the latter provides PSB.
That is correct
What I would like to know is the development flow. Is the primary development happening on master and then changes are selectively cherry-picked to r14.1.x? What is a logical distinction between master and r14.1.x? From my work in other projects, I would expect that a branch such as r14.1.x will only receive bugfixes, while master will be used as a base for new release branches in the future. That is not how things seem to work in TDE though. Looking at the commits, r14.1.x seems to receive both new features and bugfixes and it seems as if all (?) of the development made on master eventually makes it to r14.1.x. This makes me confused about the intended purpose of the master branch.
"master" is the main development branch and is the base for what R14.2.0 and R14.2.x will be. Here API/ABI changes (even breaking ones) are permitted and in general there is freedom to do whatever we want. Release cycle is roughly every 5 years. "r14.1.x" is the branch for the current R14.1.x releases, as the name implies. Here there are more restrictions on what changes are allowed and what not. Any breaking or major API/ABI change is not allowed, although minor API extensions are. A lot of the development done in master is ok to be backported to this branch, which is why you see a lot of cherry-picked commits. But some work done in master will never end up in R14.1.x, for the reasons explained above. For example master has merged tqtinterface into tqt, while r14.1.x has not. Release cycle is 6 months.
Also, is there any tentative roadmap for TDE? Is the plan to just continue working on r14.1.x, or are there plans for r14.2.x somewhere down the line?
There is a very loose plan here https://wiki.trinitydesktop.org/Trinity_Desktop_Environment#Roadmap, but it is more a list of ideas than a fixed plan. Things can change very quickly, as well as our time for the project (like 2025 is proving a very busy year for Slavek and myself...).
During development there are a lot of temporary branches, that are used to proposed and review changes. Once the changes are merged, the branches are deleted to avoid cluttering the workspace.
Cheers Michele
Thanks, that's all clear now.
There is a very loose plan here https://wiki.trinitydesktop.org/Trinity_Desktop_Environment#Roadmap
If I can have a comment on the roadmap for 14.2.0, I would say that items listed under "Development targets we should look into at some point in the future" are actually the ones I would rate as the most important from a usability perspective:
- lack of OAuth2 support frequently makes KMail unusable with company accounts, since many companies nowadays enforce higher security standards - PulseAudio or PipeWire are essential in almost every modern setup (aside from laptops maybe?) - multimedia support is becoming problematic in TDE applications and we should rely on a modern, maintained backend.
Of course, I realize all of these require a non-trivial amount of work.
Cheers, Janek
On 2025/11/19 11:01 PM, Jan Stolarek wrote:
Thanks, that's all clear now.
There is a very loose plan here https://wiki.trinitydesktop.org/Trinity_Desktop_Environment#Roadmap
If I can have a comment on the roadmap for 14.2.0, I would say that items listed under "Development targets we should look into at some point in the future" are actually the ones I would rate as the most important from a usability perspective:
- lack of OAuth2 support frequently makes KMail unusable with company accounts, since many
companies nowadays enforce higher security standards
- PulseAudio or PipeWire are essential in almost every modern setup (aside from laptops maybe?)
- multimedia support is becoming problematic in TDE applications and we should rely on a modern,
maintained backend.
Of course, I realize all of these require a non-trivial amount of work.
Indeed, as well as a lot of other things that would be good to do if we had the time/resources for it :-) Hopefully more people will help/contribute, so we can get more done in each release! As you have seen, in debian-based distro building and working on TDE modules is pretty much a breeze.
Cheers Michele
Michele Calgaro via tde-devels wrote:
Indeed, as well as a lot of other things that would be good to do if we had the time/resources for it :-) Hopefully more people will help/contribute, so we can get more done in each release! As you have seen, in debian-based distro building and working on TDE modules is pretty much a breeze.
Few days ago I installed VSCodium and opened kdebusnotifications. I couldn't believe I coded it :-D ... it seems I am getting older and the brain gets preoccupied with other stuff required to make the living :-D It is a simple program, but it works pretty well with Teams or Signal. Time is indeed a big issue. Everything is getting more and more expensive and the world more and more fragile. I hope we get a relief soon and thus more free time.
-
deloptes -
Jan Stolarek -
Michele Calgaro