[Interest] Qt 4 roadmap

[Thiago Macieira]

Em qua 19 fev 2014, às 09:17:52, Adam Light escreveu:
> We are trying to decide when, and if, we should switch to Qt 5. I've looked
> online for a Qt 4 roadmap that extends into the future but haven't found
> anything. Is one available? For long can we reasonably expect Qt4 updates
> to continue? We are using the LGPL licensed version of Qt and we don't have
> commercial support from Digia.

I believe the Open Source version will continue to be released throughout 
2014.

But I'll let you make your own informed opinion based on the following data:

Time between releases:
v4.8.1: 91 days
v4.8.2: 49 days
v4.8.3: 134 days
v4.8.4: 76 days
v4.8.5: 196 days
v4.8.6: 257 days

Number of changes since previous release:
v4.8.1: 477
v4.8.2: 177
v4.8.3: 336
v4.8.4: 230
v4.8.5: 389
v4.8.6: 238

(4.8.6 is not released, so the numbers above are the current state of the 4.8 
branch)

Commit rate per month:
2011-Dec: 158
2012-Jan: 125
2012-Feb: 157
2012-Mar: 108
2012-Apr: 111
2012-May: 72
2012-Jun: 50
2012-Jul: 91
2012-Aug: 97
2012-Sep: 81
2012-Oct: 110
2012-Nov: 91
2012-Dec: 42
2013-Jan: 97
2013-Feb: 50
2013-Mar: 38
2013-Apr: 58
2013-May: 59
2013-Jun: 36
2013-Jul: 39
2013-Aug: 43
2013-Sep: 13
2013-Oct: 18
2013-Nov: 48
2013-Dec: 16
2014-Jan: 16
2014-Feb: 17

Note the current commit rate for 4.8 and how it's been dropping. At some 
point, the time between releases will be very high and the commit rate will 
slow down to a crawl. At that point, we'll stop making Open Source releases.

That will probably not affect the Enterprise version. Given the considerable 
installed base, I believe Digia will continue supporting it for some time.

Also note that other companies do offer support for the Open Source version and 
they may make their own "vendor" releases, containing fixes that aren't part of 
the Qt Project release.

Scripts:
$ git tag v4.8.6		# Create the tag just so it works

# time
$ for i in 0 1 2 3 4 5 6; do current=`git log --format=%ct -n1 v4.8.$i`; [ -n 
"$prev" ] && echo v4.8.$i: $(((current - prev) / 86400)) days; prev=$current; 
done

# commit rate per release
$ for i in 1 2 3 4 5 6; do echo -n v4.8.$i:\ ; git rev-list v4.8.
$((i-1))..v4.8.$i | wc -l; done

# commit rate per month
$ prevyear=2011; prevmonth=Dec; for year in 2012 2013 2014; do for month in 
Jan Feb Mar Apr May Jun Jul Aug Sep Oct Nov Dec; do echo -n 
$prevyear-$prevmonth:\ ; git rev-list --since $prevyear.$prevmonth.1 --until 
$year.$month.1 4.8 | wc -l; prevyear=$year; prevmonth=$month; done; done
-- 
Thiago Macieira - thiago.macieira (AT) intel.com
  Software Architect - Intel Open Source Technology Center