Features/Xfce46

= Feature Name =

Xfce46

Summary
Update Xfce to the upstream 4.6 release with many new improvements and features.

Owner

 * Name: Kevin Fenzi


 * email: kevin@tummy.com

Current status

 * Targeted release: Fedora 11
 * Last updated: 2009-02-28
 * Percentage of completion: 100%

Detailed Description
The Xfce project has been working on a new version, 4.6 for quite a while now. The 4.6 final version is currently in rawhide. The final release is currently estimated to be very soon now. This should give time for polishing and bugfixing before F11 is released. Additionally, a dist-f11-xfce tag will be used to coordinate the package builds, so impact on rawhide will be minimal until the full set of packages is ready to land at once.

Benefit to Fedora
Xfce 4.6 has a number of improvements and new features. A few of the more notable ones:


 * new libxfce4menu that follows the freedesktop.org menu standards
 * new Xconf configuration system, which replaces the mcs system in use since 4.0.0
 * new settings dialogs
 * many bugfixes and enhancements to xfdesktop, including monitor hot plugging support.
 * new xfce4-mixer with support for pulseaudio and multiple sound cards.

Scope
Existing packages will need to be updated to 4.6 in rawhide. Four new packages have been reviewed and will need to be imported:


 * DONE: libxfce4menu - See review bug: Bugzilla: 477839
 * DONE: xfconf - See review bug: Bugzilla: 477732
 * DONE: xfce4-settings - See review bug: Bugzilla: 47799
 * DONE: xfce4-power-manager - See review bug: Bugzilla: 486476

Five packages will need to be Obsoleted and blocked from F11:


 * DONE: libxfce4mcs
 * DONE: xfce-mcs-manager
 * DONE: xfce-mcs-plugins
 * DONE: xfce-mcs-plugins-extra
 * DONE: xfce-mcs-plugin-gsynaptics

These packages implement or use the old mcs configuration. All packages are correctly obsoleted by xfconf-4.5.93 (2009-01-19).

How To Test
New installs:

(More specifics can be added when final changelogs are available)
 * install rawhide/F11 on any machine.
 * yum groupinstall 'XFCE'
 * confirm gdm offers Xfce4 as a session type
 * confirm you can select this session and login
 * confirm settings changes can be made and saved, and are found after a logout/login cycle.
 * confirm day to day desktop functions are working.
 * confirm all settings dialogs come up and work.
 * confirm xfce4-mixer starts and can manage any sound card(s).

User Experience
Users should see additional functionality and features available from the Xfce desktop.

Dependencies
In addition to the core Xfce packages, all the xfce plugins packages will need to be rebuild and updated. Work will be coordinated with the plugins maintainer.

Contingency Plan
Revert to older Xfce 4.4 version. This may require a Epoch and rebuilding packages and plugins. Or if the dist-f11-xfce tag has not yet been merged back into rawhide, only reverts in cvs will be required.

Documentation
http://wiki.xfce.org/releng/4.6/general-info

http://wiki.xfce.org/releng/4.6/milestones

http://www.xfce.org/about/news?id=18

http://www.xfce.org/about/news?id=16

http://www.xfce.org/about/news?id=15

http://www.xfce.org/about/news?id=21

http://www.xfce.org/about/tour

Release Notes
Xfce has been updated to version 4.6. This version includes many enhancements and bug fixes. See the tour at http://www.xfce.org/about/tour for more information.

Comments and Discussion

 * See Talk:Features/Xfce46