Re: Qt in core-updates (was: KDE in core-updates)

[Philip McGrath]

Hi,

On Sunday, February 26, 2023 7:44:20 AM EST Andreas Enge wrote:
> 
> In any case, I realised that we are still compiling most packages (including
> KDE) with Qt 5, which is seriously outdated (not maintained any more in the
> free version since May 2021). Qt 6.3 support will end in April 2023, that
> of the current version Qt 6.4 in September 2023. So we have the work carved
> out for a (yet to be created) Qt/KDE team.
> 

Note that KDE maintains a patch collection for Qt 5.15:
https://community.kde.org/Qt5PatchCollection

There was an announcement here:
https://dot.kde.org/2021/04/06/announcing-kdes-qt-5-patch-collection

Patches are exclusively backports of bugfixes that have already been committed 
to upstream Qt 6, except that patches for Qt 5.15 components removed in Qt 6 
are also accepted. The patches are curated by a small group of KDE developers 
who also have commit privileges in the upstream Qt Project (as distinct from 
the Qt Company).

I think out Qt 5 packages should be based on the KDE patch collection.

The patches are maintained in Git repositories with the same structure as 
upstream Qt. They could be extracted with `git format-patch v5.15.3-lts-
lgpl..origin/kde/5.15` and added to "gnu/packages/patches/", or we could just 
change the origins for Qt 5 to point to KDE's repositories, e.g. this one for 
qt-base: https://invent.kde.org/qt/qt/qtbase/-/tree/kde/5.15

Most KDE stuff can build against Qt 6, but it will continue targeting Qt 5.15 
until KDE Frameworks 6 and Plasma 6 are released (maybe as soon as the end of 
this year?).

I'm not a Qt or C++ developer, but I'm a long-time KDE user, and I'm really 
excited that people have been working to get KDE into Guix: thank you!

-Philip

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