Gentoo KDE Project

1.  Project Description

The goal of the Gentoo KDE team is to provide working support for all packages supported by the KDE Project. We also support as many underlying packages as necessary in order to have a properly working KDE environment. However, some KDE applications might belong to other teams due to the fact that the KDE project cannot maintain all of them properly, as there are too many applications and many of them are not used by the KDE maintainers. Nevertheless, the project does support the teams that do manage these applications, and will ensure that they use the KDE eclasses appropriately.

2.  Available KDE versions

KDE 4

The latest major version of KDE in the official Portage tree is 4.7, the latest stable major version 4.7. The KDE 4 series is only available via split ebuilds. New sub-minor releases (e.g. 4.7.4) are released every month. Unless there are any setbacks, they are stabilised within a month after their addition to the Portage tree.

KDE 4.7 is the current stable version. If you running KDEPIM and upgrade from 4.4 to 4.7, please have a look at the Gentoo Wiki KDEPIM 4.7 Upgrade Guide first! If you want to stick with KDEPIM 4.4 you can mask KDEPIM 4.7. General help is given in the Gentoo KDE Guide.

Also, the KDE team maintains an overlay called kde in layman. It contains additional applications, as well as snapshot and live ebuilds for KDE 4. Things in there are considered not stable enough for the tree, but are used for testing. If you are a bold and daring Gentoo user, you can help us with testing these ebuilds.

KDE 3.5

The maintainance of KDE 3 now takes place in the kde-sunset overlay (available in layman). All KDE 3 core and miscellaneous packages have been moved there. Keep in mind that this overlay is user-maintained only, and current KDE team members have no responsibility about its status. If you are interested in co-maintaining it, you can send an email to Theo Chatzimichos asking for commit access. If you want to report a bug about this overlay, please don't file a bug in Gentoo's Bugzilla. Instead, use the gentoo-desktop mailing list. Instructions on how to subscribe can be found here.

Please see the Gentoo Overlays Users's Guide to get all information on how to use overlays.

3.  Meeting logs and summaries

The KDE team holds irregular meetings in #gentoo-meetings usually on the third Thursday of every month at 19:00 UTC. Whenever there is a meeting, it will be announced together with the agenda in the topic of #gentoo-kde. Summaries of each meeting will be available here, along with raw logs for public viewing.

4.  Support and assistance

There are several ways to get support with KDE related issues:

• To install KDE on Gentoo, use the Gentoo KDE Guide. This guide covers the installation of KDE 4 and the various KDE 4 applications, plus some FAQ, hints, and troubleshooting sections.
• You can join #gentoo-kde on the Freenode IRC network. You'll find some of the team members there most of the time.
• You can address your concerns in the Gentoo Forums. Not all of us are avid forums users but many experienced users and some developers are likely to be able to help you.
• The KDE team uses the gentoo-desktop mailing list very often, to discuss about problems, announce various things (like meetings or important changes) or even get in touch with users and solve problems. Instructions on how to subscribe can be found here.
• Of course, you can also file a bug report. Please read the chapter How to report bugs before.

5.  How *you* can help

The main thing that needs doing is trawling through the current open bugs and finding those that are stale, or those that have an equivalent on KDE's Bugzilla.

You'll find a current list of open bugs here.

For those that are stale, you should ask on the bug if the problem remains in the latest version. If someone has already done this and the reporter (or someone else experiencing the same problem) has not replied it should be marked NEEDINFO.

Speaking of bugs - now you can become a Herd Tester, too! You'll find all the necessary information about what a Herd Tester is and does on the KDE Herd Testers Project Page.

• Currently trusted users: HACKERS
• Hints for packagers (also for other devs): CODE

Finally, it would be great to chat to you on IRC, too - this is how we normally get to know each other. Please drop into #gentoo-kde and chat with us. If you have any problems or questions, feel free to /query individual team members or ask in #gentoo-kde, #gentoo-desktop or #gentoo.

6.  How to report bugs

When you encounter a bug, it should always be reported. The best thing you can do is to check whether it is already reported, and if not, report to the correct people. When in doubt about the bug being gentoo's fault or an upstream bug, try to follow this procedure:

• If the bug is a runtime issue (crash or wrong package behaviour), it should be reported upstream. You can report a bug to us as well if you want, so we can track it and backport the patch. If you don't have kdebase-runtime-meta installed, then please install it first, and if you are able to reproduce, then go ahead and file the upstream bug. If you are not able to reproduce, then please report the bug only to Gentoo, with all that information.
• If the bug is a build failure, a depedency error or a general ebuild bug, it should reported to Gentoo.
• If you are still in doubt, we'd prefer you open the bug for Gentoo, so we can check and advise you how to proceed.

7.  Developers

All developers can be reached by e-mail using nickname@gentoo.org.

8.  Subprojects

The KDE project has the following subprojects:

9.  Herds

The KDE project maintains the following herds: