Friday, 12 September 2014
KDE today announces the release of KDE Frameworks 5.2.0.
KDE Frameworks are 60 addon libraries to Qt which provide a wide variety of commonly needed functionality in mature, peer reviewed and well tested libraries with friendly licensing terms. For an introduction see the KDE Frameworks release announcement.
This release is part of a series of planned monthly releases making improvements available to developers in a quick and predictable manner.
New in this version
KActivities
- reimplementation of the file item plugin for linking files to activities
KArchive
- fix handling of uncompressed files
KConfigWidgets
- fix missing default shortcuts for standard actions, leading to many runtime warnings
- better support for QGroupBox in KConfigDialogManager
KCoreAddons
- Mark KAboutData::setProgramIconName() as deprecated, it did not do anything. Use QApplication::setWindowIcon(QIcon::fromTheme("...")) instead.
- new classes Kdelibs4ConfigMigrator and KPluginMetaData
KDeclarative
- added org.kde.kio component.
KImageFormats
- disable the DDS and JPEG-2000 plugins when Qt version is 5.3 or later
KIO
- now follows the mime-apps spec, for better interoperability with gio when it comes to the user's preferred and default apps.
- new classes EmptyTrashJob and RestoreJob.
- new functions isClipboardDataCut and setClipboardDataCut.
KNewStuff
- installing "stuff" works again (porting bug)
KWidgetsAddons
- new class KColumnResizer (makes it easy to vertically align widgets across groups)
KWindowSystem
- New method KWindowSystem::setOnActivities
KXmlGui
- KActionCollection::setDefaultShortcuts now makes the shortcut active too, to simplify application code.
Threadweaver
- The maximum worker count will now decrease if a lower value is set after workers have been created. Previously, workers would remain active once they have been created.
- Examples from the previous ThreadWeaverDemos Github repository are being merged into the KF5 ThreadWeaver repo.
- The maximum worker count can now be set to zero (the previous minimum was 1). Doing so will effectively halt processing in the queue.
- Documentation of various aspects of ThreadWeaver use is becoming part of the KDE Frameworks Cookbook. Parts of it is located in the examples/ directory.
Buildsystem changes
- Support for relative libexec dir.
Frameworkintegration
- the file dialog now remembers its size correctly, and works better with remote URLs.
Getting started
You can discuss and share ideas on this release in the comments section of the dot article.
Installing binary packages
On Linux, using packages for your favorite distribution is the recommended way to get access to KDE Frameworks. Get KDE Software on Your Linux Distro wiki page
Compiling from sources
The complete source code for KDE Frameworks 5.2.0 may be freely downloaded. Instructions on compiling and installing are available from the KDE Frameworks 5.2.0 Info Page.
Building from source is possible using the basic cmake .; make; make install commands. For a single Tier 1 framework, this is often the easiest solution. People interested in contributing to frameworks or tracking progress in development of the entire set are encouraged to use kdesrc-build. Frameworks 5.2.0 requires Qt
A detailed listing of all Frameworks with API documentation is on api.kde.org.
Get Involved
Those interested in following and contributing to the development of Frameworks can check out the git repositories and follow the discussions on the KDE Frameworks Development mailing list. Policies and the current state of the project and plans are available at the Frameworks wiki. Real-time discussions take place on the #kde-devel IRC channel on Libera Chat.
Supporting KDE
KDE is a Free Software community that exists and grows only because of the help of many volunteers that donate their time and effort. KDE is always looking for new volunteers and contributions, whether it is help with coding, bug fixing or reporting, writing documentation, translations, promotion, money, etc. All contributions are gratefully appreciated and eagerly accepted. Please read through the Supporting KDE page for further information or become a KDE e.V. supporting member through our Join the Game initiative.