Alien Pastures

My thoughts on Slackware, life and everything

Tag: kde49 (Page 2 of 2)

KDE Software Compilation 4.9 is ready

August 1, 2012 / / 36 Comments

The release schedule is accurate as always. Today, the release of KDE SC 4.9 was announced on kde.org!

I could get the sources in time and therefore I am able to present you the Slackware KDE 4.9 packages – for Slackware-current of course (more precise, for Slackware 14 Beta1).

I assume that some of you have already downloaded and installed my earlier betas and release candidate of this new KDE series, and compared with the release candidate I previoiusly had, not much new shows up (well, bug fixes of course).

You can safely upgrade from Slackware’s KDE 4.8.4, the differences with that release are not overtly visible either, the real changes are in the “engine room”. KDE 4.9.x is an intermediate release series to prepare for the KDE Frameworks 5. The announcement page shows further changes in the development process: more attention has been going to the beta testing phase. You already noticed at the time of the first 4.9 beta, when KDE opened a “call for beta testing” page and encouraged packagers not to wait until the release candidates or the final release.

What can be told about the new set of Slackware packages?

  • There are three updated dependencies compared to Slackware’s own KDE 4.8.4: akonadi, shared-desktop-ontologies and soprano.
  • Compared to KDE 4.8.4, there were two package removals:
    • kdemultimedia has been split up into several smaller individual packages.
    • ksecrets has been removed completely in the 4.9.x series.
  • A noteworthy feature in KDE 4.9 has been added to Okular, the document viewer in KDE. Many people will cheer: Okular is now able to save the annotations you make to PDF files.

The KDE 4.9.0 packages for Slackware 14 beta1 and newer are available for download from my “ktown” repository and several mirrors (taper will probably be in sync when I post this, the other mirrors will have to catch up):

The accompanying README file contains detailed installation/upgrade instructions.

Also, I will repeat this bit of text which I wrote at the time of release of KDE 4.9 release candidate 1:

As you may have noticed when inspecting the above URLs, I have re-arranged my “ktown” repository. People were confused about what version would work with Slackware -current and what would work for 13.37. Also, some people have asked for sources of older releases for which I no longer host the packages.

I moved all the sources out of the package trees, you will now find a “source” directory right at the top level of the repository. Below that will be the sources of all package sets which I currently have in my repository (KDE 4.6.5, 4.7.4, 4.8.4 and 4.9.0, including all the dependencies you may want for compiling it on Slackware 13.37). The packages will be available below a toplevel directory equal to the Slackware version they were compiled for (at the moment those are “13.37” and “current“). Below that you will find the actual KDE versions and further down, the 32-bit and 64-bit packages.

Have fun! Eric

Busy days, not Slackware related

July 11, 2012 / / 20 Comments

In the next days or weeks, I am going to try and rest and re-vitalize myself. It would be a waste of effort if I burnt myself out. But the shitty weather does not help. Who feels like it is summer in Europe? I have just emptied the buckets in the hallway which caught the water seeping through the crack in the roof… repair money is not available right now.

During the past week, there were many such distractions to keep me away from hacking at Slackware. This will likely remain unchanged during the next weeks. We had a fire in the kitchen, which caused damage (the stove and oven were destroyed), but luckily no one got hurt! It takes time to invite experts to assess the damage, arrange repairs and such. I als got hooked on some e-books I had loaded onto my Sony E-reader… reading is eating away precious time faster than you think!

Anyway, all this distraction had consequences for the package pipeline. With regular releases of KDE, LibreOffice, OpenJDK and VLC – all pretty big builds – my free time is increasingly limited to building updates for these aforementioned programs. It is frustrating at times that I have to make an advance planning because especially KDE and LibreOffice releases tend to come at roughly the same time. Building in several virtual machines at the same time hurts my server’s performance and it does not help the total build time per program…

Also, I really need to pick up the pace with my new but currently stalled ARM port of Slackware (which will have differences to the existing ARMedslack port). I am talking to some people about what would be a cool computer to own which really should be running Slackware. The outcome of those discussions I will reserve for a future post, because I will probably need assistance.

That is why I decided that I am not going to build packages for the upcoming KDE 4.9-rc2. I will wait for the final release of 4.9.0 instead.

I will try to get LibreOffice packages compiled for the 3.5.5 release which was announced today. It depends on the errors I encounter during compilation… I do not have time to hunt compilation issues down and fix them. So, fingers crossed!

End of rant.

Eric

Getting closer: KDE 4.9 Release Candidate 1

June 27, 2012 / / 39 Comments

Today, the KDE team officially announced the first release candidate for KDE Software Compilation 4.9. That is less than a day after the source tarballs were posted on the private area where packagers have access. The new KDE release manager is giving “us packagers” a hard time – it was probably done as a penalty for the fact that several of the “big distros” were releasing packages long before the KDE team officially announced them. This was seen by the KDE release team as abusing a privileged position. After all, the sources are released in advance so that packages can be ready when a new release is announced… but those packages should stay under wraps as long as the release team has not given a go-ahead. The discussions on the (private) kde-packager and releaseteam mailing lists were not always friendly.

But. of course compiling the KDE packages is trivial using the modular KDE.SlackBuild script, and I have the packages ready for you – compiled for Slackware-current. The upgrade from Slackware’s KDE 4.8.4 to the 4.9-rc1 release (the version number is 4.8.95) should be trivial. There are three updated dependencies (akonadi, soprano and shared-desktop-ontologies). The new akonadi is a requiremnt for RC1. The RC1 packages also fix the incompatibilities with Slackware-current’s new attica and python packages (the previous Beta2 packages needed some tweaking to work with the latest slackware-current).

Like with the previous betas, I did not bother with anything from “extragear”. Pat Volkerding updated many of those when he added KDE 4.8.4 to Slackware-current. Speaking of 4.8.4 – that is the version which will ship with Slackware 14 unless KDE releases an unplanned bugfix 4.8.5. DO NOT expect KDE 4.9 in the next Slackware. We have a winner with 4.8.4 and we do not want to risk introducing new bugs with a 4.9 zero release when we are basically cleaning up the loose ends in slackware-current.

Enough chatter, back to reality now. While you good folk are waiting for your KDE download, I will continue my fight with VLC dependencies in another Virtual Machine… those are currently giving me headaches, and VLC 2..0.2 has been tagged so I expect an official source tarball any moment.

Get my KDE packages in any of the following locations (the master repository at alien.slackbook.org is severely restricted in bandwidth so using a mirror is always advised):

The accompanying README file contains detailed installation/upgrade instructions.

As you may have noticed when inspecting the above URLs, I have re-arranged my “ktown” repository. People were confused about what version would work with Slackware -current and what would work for 13.37. Also, some people have asked for sources of older releases for which I no longer host the packages.

I moved all the sources out of the package trees, you will now find a “source” directory right at the top level of the repository. Below that will be the sources of all package sets which I currently have in my repository (KDE 4.6.5, 4.7.4, 4.8.4 and 4.8.95, including all the dependencies you may want for compiling it on Slackware 13.37). The packages will be available below a toplevel directory equal to the Slackware version they were compiled for (at the moment those are “13.37” and “current“). Below that you will find the actual KDE versions and further down, the 32-bit and 64-bit packages.

Have fun! Eric

Testing can continue: KDE 4.9 Beta2

June 13, 2012 / / 48 Comments

The KDE team has officially announced the second beta of KDE Software Compilation 4.9. A more technical overview of the changes with regard to the previous beta can be found on this community page. After an API and feature freeze, it is just bug hunting (and fixing) until we see the arrival of KDE 4.9 in early august.

As usual, the packages for this second beta have been compiled on Slackware-current. The upgrade from Slackware’s KDE 4.8.2 to the 4.9-beta2 release (the version number is 4.8.90) should be trivial. There are two updated dependencies (soprano and shared-desktop-ontologies, the latter was added for beta2). Like with the previous beta, I did not bother with anything from “extragear” – although I was tempted to try Calligra. Please report the bugs you find! It will make the next KDE release even better

Get my packages in any of the following locations (the master repository at slackbook.org is severely restricted in bandwidth so using a mirror is always advised):

The accompanying README file contains detailed installation/upgrade instructions.

As you may have noticed when inspecting the above URLs, I have re-arranged my “ktown” repository. People were confused about what version would work with Slackware -current and what would work for 13.37. Also, some people have asked for sources of older releases for which I no longer host the packages.

I moved all the sources out of the package trees, you will now find a “sources” directory right at the top level of the repository. Below that will be the sources of all package sets which I currently have in my repository (KDE 4.6.5, 4.8.4 and 4.8.90) and soon I will also add sources for KDE 4.7.4 (including all the dependencies you may want for compiling it on Slackware 13.37). The packages will be available below a toplevel directory equal to the Slackware version they were compiled for (at the moment those are “13.37” and “current”). Below that you will find the actual KDE versions and further down, the 32-bit and 64-bit packages.

Have fun! Eric

Results of a few days of packaging software

June 3, 2012 / / 34 Comments

I hinted at the upcoming packages in an earlier post. KDE release team had asked on the packagers mailing list if it would be possible for distros to make early betas available of KDE 4.9 because it needs a lot of testing. It took me a while to find out how to build everything and to discover that not all of the split-off packages (the old “kdemultimedia” has been split up) would compile on Slackware. While I was busy with that, I discovered that there was a new IcedTea release too, which meant I could compile a new OpenJDK package.

KDE 4.9-beta1

The KDE team will officially announce the sources for the first beta of KDE Software Compilation 4.9 on monday 4 june, after some delay which was caused by a missing soprano package. However, I do not have time for a blog post on monday, being too busy at work, so I will make my packages and scripts available one day earlier.

Keep in mind that the packages for this beta have been compiled on Slackware-current. The upgrade from Slackware’s KDE 4.8.2 to the 4.9-beta1 release (the version number is 4.8.80) should be trivial. There is only one updated dependency (the aforementioned soprano) and none of the “extragear” was upgraded – I focused on the KDE core. If you are interested, grab them, install them, try out as much of the desktop environment as you can, and report the bugs you find!

Get my packages here:

The accompanying README file contains detailed installation/upgrade instructions.

Note: KDE 4.8.4 packages will be hot on the heels of this package set. I am already compiling it, and will wait until the official announcement on kde.org with making them public.

OpenJDK 7u4

 The newest release 2.2 of IcedTea builds the fourth update to the Java 7 platform. Icedtea is a “build harness” – it provides an enhanced way of compiling OpenJDK sources, adding a lot of patches which are not present in the original OpenJDK sources and offering an additional Java web browser plugin, icedtea-web.

I built the OpenJDK 7u4_b21 packages for you, along with the icedtea-web plugin package. Note that Slackware (as with all other distros) is no longer allowed by the new terms of Oracle’s license to distribute the official Oracle binaries of the JDK and JRE. Therefore you have not seen an update to the Java packages in Slackware for a long time. You can update using my native (i.e. compile on Slackware) packages of OpenJDK (the open sourced version of large parts of Oracle’s Java code), or download Oracle’s official binaries yourself and use the official Slackware build script to wrap those binaries into a Slackware package. The choice is yours!

You can test the installed packages here for instance:

Upgrade to my OpenJDK package now!

Note: you will find a JRE (java runtime engine) and a JDK (java development kit) package. Only install one of those! The JRE is sufficient if you just want to run Java based applications. You need the JDK if you want to be able to compile Java code. Also, grab the icedtea-web (optional) and rhino (required) packages.

Better even: download them from one of the mirrors. Since the slackware.com web server is up and running again, we have applied a download cap to the team’s member pages which will slow down your retrievals. For instance, you could use my taper.alienbase.nl or Darren Austin’s UK mirror .

Have fun! Eric

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