Thursday, 8 January 2015
KDE today announces the release of KDE Frameworks 5.6.0.
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
Two new frameworks in this version: KPackage and NetworkManagerQt
KActivities
- Introducing the ActivityInfo QML object
- Linking now supports special values alongside activity ids. Supported values:
- :global - links to all activities
- :current - links to the current activity
KCoreAddons
- KDirWatch can now watch /dev/shm as well (bug 314982)
- KDELibs4Migration now always returns an absolute path
KCrash
- Fix build on FreeBSD
Kdelibs4Support
- Add Lithuania to the list of Euro countries
KdeSU
- Fix build on OSX and on FreeBSD
KHtml
- 6 bug fixes forward-ported from kdelibs4.
KIO
- Add support for .hidden files, for users to hide some files from views. (feature 246260)
- New method KRun::runService, like KRun::run but returns the PID of the newly started process.
- kioexec: fixed many porting bugs, to make it work again
- KRun::run: fixed porting bug, to make it work again in the case where KProcess is used directly
- KRun: make klauncher runtime dependency optional
- Fix compilation on MSVC
- Performance: decrease memory consumption of UDSEntry
- Actions in popupmenus: in case of multiple mimetypes selected, services that support all mimetypes are now added to the menu.
- New job: KIO::DropJob KIO::drop(QDropEvent ev, QUrl destUrl). Replaces KonqOperations::doDrop.
- Restart directory watcher after a failed delete operation
- Fix false warning about X-KDE-Protocols unused in desktop files without that field.
- Merge various settings modules (KCMs) related to kio, into the kio framework.
- When copying/moving out the trash, make the files writable.
- KIO::file_move now does the chmod on the destination file before emitting result.
KNotifications
- Remove NotifyBySound. NotifyByAudio implements the "Sound" notification already
- Fix crash accessing dangling pointer in NotifyByPopup
KRunner
- Do not detect anything with a '.' as a NetworkLocation (porting bug, bug 340140). One can also uses a decimal point in a calculator.
KService
- Fix build on MSVC.
KTextEditor
- Fix build on MSVC.
- vimode bugfixes
- add syntax file for Oracle PL/SQL
- ppd highlighting: better support for multiline values
KWidgetsAddons
- Add runtime style element extension convenience functions for widgets: KStyleExtensions
KWindowSystem
- Add OnScreenDisplay window type
- Fix build on FreeBSD
Plasma-framework
- Let month menu navigate in current year (bug 342327)
- Expose new OnScreenDisplay window type in Dialog
- Migrate Plasma::Package to KPackage
- Fix labels not picking up changes to font settings at runtime
- Fix text not properly updating its color when switching themes (especially dark<-->light)
- Fix placeholder text in textfields being too strong when using a light theme
- Set visibility on mainItem to match Dialog
- Load IconItem immediately upon componentComplete()
- Use the same text colour for comboboxes as buttons
- Performance improvements (less config-file reparsing, use shared config...)
- roundToIconSize(0) now returns 0
- Give undo notifications a title
Solid
- Enable fstab and upower backends on FreeBSD
- Power: Add aboutToSuspend signal
Buildsystem changes
- ECM's KDEInstallDirs now supports KDEINSTALL_ variables, which should be used in preference to the CMAKEINSTALL_ variables or the older KDELibs4-compatible variables. The older forms of the variables are still supported (and kept in sync) unless KDE_INSTALL_DIRS_NO_DEPRECATED or KDE_INSTALL_DIRS_NO_CMAKE_VARIABLES are set to TRUE. See the documentation for more details.
- Add COMPATIBILITY argument to ecm_setup_version(). Lots of libraries will want to use SameMajorVersion to make sure searching for version 1 of a library doesn't give you version 2, for example.
- Fix ECMQueryQmake when Qt5Core is missing.
Additional buildsystem changes in Extra-Cmake-Modules 1.6.1
- Fix building projects that use both GNUInstallDirs and KDEInstallDirs in different subdirectories by not unsetting cache variables in KDEInstallDirs.
- Fix KDE_INSTALL_TARGETS_DEFAULT_ARGS value on OSX.
Frameworkintegration
- Fix handling of palette change events (bug 336813)
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 5.6.0 may be freely downloaded. Instructions on compiling and installing are available from the KDE Frameworks 5.6.0 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 5.6.0 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.