Friday, 13 March 2015
KDE today announces the release of KDE Frameworks 5.8.0.
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
New frameworks:
- KPeople, provides access to all contacts and the people who hold them
- KXmlRpcClient, interaction with XMLRPC services
General
- A number of build fixes for compiling with the upcoming Qt 5.5
KActivities
- Resources scoring service is now finalized
KArchive
- Stop failing on ZIP files with redundant data descriptors
KCMUtils
- Restore KCModule::setAuthAction
KCoreAddons
- KPluginMetadata: add support for Hidden key
KDeclarative
- Prefer exposing lists to QML with QJsonArray
- Handle non default devicePixelRatios in images
- Expose hasUrls in DeclarativeMimeData
- Allow users to configure how many horizontal lines are drawn
KDocTools
- Fix the build on MacOSX when using Homebrew
- Better styling of media objects (images, ...) in documentation
- Encode invalid chars in paths used in XML DTDs, avoiding errors
KGlobalAccel
- Activation timestamp set as dynamic property on triggered QAction.
KIconThemes
- Fix QIcon::fromTheme(xxx, someFallback) would not return the fallback
KImageFormats
- Make PSD image reader endianess-agnostic.
KIO
- Deprecate UDSEntry::listFields and add the UDSEntry::fields method which returns a QVector without costly conversion.
- Sync bookmarkmanager only if change was by this process (bug 343735)
- Fix startup of kssld5 dbus service
- Implement quota-used-bytes and quota-available-bytes from RFC 4331 to enable free space information in http ioslave.
KNotifications
- Delay the audio init until actually needed
- Fix notification config not applying instantly
- Fix audio notifications stopping after first file played
KNotifyConfig
- Add optional dependency on QtSpeech to reenable speaking notifications.
KService
- KPluginInfo: support stringlists as properties
KTextEditor
- Add word count statistics in statusbar
- vimode: fix crash when removing last line in Visual Line mode
KWidgetsAddons
- Make KRatingWidget cope with devicePixelRatio
KWindowSystem
- KSelectionWatcher and KSelectionOwner can be used without depending on QX11Info.
- KXMessages can be used without depending on QX11Info
NetworkManagerQt
- Add new properties and methods from NetworkManager 1.0.0
Plasma framework
- Fix plasmapkg2 for translated systems
- Improve tooltip layout
- Make it possible to let plasmoids to load scripts outside the plasma package ...
Buildsystem changes (extra-cmake-modules)
- Extend ecm_generate_headers macro to also support CamelCase.h headers
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 5.8.0 may be freely downloaded. Instructions on compiling and installing are available from the KDE Frameworks 5.8.0 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 5.8.0 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.