[Development] Deprecation/removal model going into Qt 6

[Manuel Bergler]

Am Mo., 3. Juni 2019 um 01:35 Uhr schrieb Kevin Kofler <kevin.kofler at chello.at>:
>
> Manuel Bergler wrote:
> > And this is where we come full circle :) Yes, FOSS needs to port, so
> > we should make porting as easy as possible. In particular, there
> > shouldn't be too many breaking changes all at once as that would make
> > porting a multi-month project. Instead, spread out the breaking
> > changes by also allowing them in minor releases.
>
> And it has already been pointed out elsewhere in this thread that this would
> be an absolute nightmare for distributions! The major releases are enough of
> a pain as it stands now, having to keep old minor releases around too
> (because some software will just never get ported, no matter how small the
> required changes are) is just not workable.

Well, something has to give. Either
  a) Qt can never remove superseded APIs and classes (which is what
you suggested previously) and will eventually collapse under its own
weight, or
  b) Distributors have to deal with the fact that some software
doesn't port and have to ship every version of qt side-by-side, or
  c) The software that doesn't port has to deal with the fact that it
will be dropped by distributions. But any software with sufficiently
many users to warrant packaging by the distributors should be able to
find a maintainer that at least can keep it compiling.

Best
Manuel