[QGIS-Developer] QGIS 4.0 - let's start some early discussions!

[Nyall Dawson]

On Tue, 25 Jun 2019 at 20:28, Nathan Woodrow <madmanwoo at gmail.com> wrote:
>
> Personally, I'm a bit uncomfortable with any kind of API break if we can avoid it which means we don't need to call it 4.0 as that marks a major API break when bumping that version number?  Any reason we need to make it 4.0 and not just continue down the 3.x stream until we are forced to break APIS?

Eventually, at some time we'll have to break API, and release 4.0. I'd
like us to start **thinking** and planning for that now, even if the
actual release doesn't happen for 2+ years (as is likely).

I mean, I think we'd all agree that there is things we could improve
upon from the 3.0 experience. If we leave this discussion for another
22 months, and then are forced to make a bunch of tricky decisions in
a matter of days, it's not exactly ideal :P Long term planning is
**always** going to beneficial!

Nyall

>
> We should be able to migrate away from any API breaks in theory right? We couldn't for 3.0 because of all the SIP and Python 3 stuff but that shouldn't be the case in Qt 6 hopefully.
>
> That is just my take.  We need to maintain a stable API for as long as possible if we can which I know you know I'm just double voicing it.
>
> - Nathan
>
> On Tue, Jun 25, 2019 at 7:42 PM Nyall Dawson <nyall.dawson at gmail.com> wrote:
>>
>> Hi all,
>>
>> Following conversation from https://github.com/qgis/QGIS/pull/30234, I
>> think it would be beneficial if we start the conversation happening
>> about QGIS 4.0, and to throw some thoughts about timelines out there.
>>
>> **Before anyone panics -- I'm expecting multi-year time frames here!
>> But I think we should START this discussion, and have at least some
>> idea of the time frames we're all aiming toward for a future 4.0
>> release.**
>>
>> For reference: Qt upstream has previously hinted at November 2020 for
>> Qt 6, at which stage support for 5.x will be dropped. Discussions so
>> far are moving toward Qt 6 being a "gentle" cleaning, so there's
>> likely (hopefully?) not a lot we'll be forced to do to adapt to this.
>>
>> I think we should aim for a similar goal -- a "gentle" API break, as
>> opposed to the huge-clean-and-break-everything-we-possibly-can
>> approach we took for 3.x (with good reason!).
>>
>> Thoughts?
>>
>> Nyall
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