I hope I’m explaining this good:
There is krita stable, which you use already.
Then there is krita-plus. Think of it like a new game plus from a video game. It takes the stable release and adds additional bug fixes that won’t break anything.
The unstable build is from the upstream git repository. Git if you don’t know, is how source code is maintained across other computers. Git is used by the GNU/Linux kernel for instance. Unstable will be more prone to crashes and other undesirable behavior, but you may find a bug that was too big to backport to krita plus fixed in the git development repo.
Hey, thanks for the update
I like the design of the new website and you mentioned rough edges so I went through my typical search spots. I noted that the last time the public roadmap on the website (not the news[Roadmap | Krita]) was updated seems to be somewhere between 2018 and 2019. It would be nice to see an updated version of that page.
Thank you and while I have already seen the new post I sense that the roadmap could provide the information more concisely.
If we want a nice roadmap page then it could be nice that new upcoming features or scope goals can go there as well instead of just sitting in a post that people will have to sift through to find who said what, with the eventual destination of being covered by other posts. Moreover, the roadmap page can communicate the purpose of the work being done during a particular period to potential supporters.
The very minimum of upkeep (in my opinion) would be to put a (2020 and Beyond) type section at the end there.
Whether or not we do anything, as it stands, the page makes it look as though work has stopped.
That would be cool indeed. A simple bulleted list by major and minor Krita version with the planned feature or enhancement, plus an expected release date, if known.
However, I’m guessing the team doesn’t want this information in the public to manage the expectations. With a small team, the slips are likely to happen and it’s difficult to mitigate them. People would get disappointed sooner or later.
So, maybe it’s better to get surprised by a great update every now and then.
To my knowledge, there isn’t really that detailed a level of planning happening. In the roadmap post, there’s a list of features that’s “here’s some things we would like to work on, but we don’t know yet when we might get to it”. Since it’s hard to plan that far ahead, especially with just a small team compared to the size of the software. And a lot of other things are done unplanned by random contributors (like me and you).
It’s more like,
5.2.3 (April?):
Bugfixes™️
5.3 (later this year? early next year? ??):
Text Tool updates
Porting dependencies to new system
Whatever else people happen to work on
6.0 (next year ??? later?):
Qt6
Whatever else
Future:
Mobile friendly UI (after Qt6)
Etc
Other than aiming for 5.2.3 in April, those dates are just wild guesses by me, so don’t take them too seriously.
I do agree that the Roadmap page on the website could use an update though, at least to add whatever’s been done in the last four years (2020, 2021, 2022, 2023) and state the goals for this year.
