Update on the future of qcad (a popular CAD package) in Debian

[Jonathan Carter (highvoltage)]

Hi Scott

Thanks for the heads-up, from Edubuntu we might not be able to
contribute much directly to improving LibreCad itself, but we'll make
some noise and spread awareness about it and will gladly ship it once
it's ready for mass-consumption.

-Jonathan

On 11/01/11 01:03 PM, Scott Howard wrote:
> ---------- Forwarded message ----------
> From: Scott Howard <showard314 at gmail.com>
> Date: Tue, Jan 11, 2011 at 11:40 AM
> Subject: Update on the future of qcad (a popular CAD package) in Debian
> To: debian-science at lists.debian.org, 604595 at bugs.debian.org,
> 605914 at bugs.debian.org, edubuntu-devel at lists.ubuntu.com
> Cc: Ries van Twisk <ries at vantwisk.nl>
> 
> 
> The Debian Qt/KDE team is planning to remove the KDE3 and Qt3 libraries from
> Debian shortly after the Squeeze release. The transition phase to KDE4 and Qt4
> will finish since both KDE and Nokia upstream don't maintain the old versions
> of those libraries anymore.
> 
> In order to make this move, all packages directly or indirectly depending on
> the KDE3/Qt3 libraries have to either get ported to KDE4/Qt4 or eventually get
> removed from the Debian repositories [1]
> 
> The GPLed release of qcad has only be available for qt3, and the
> developers have withheld releasing the qt4 version under a free
> license for several years (they are keeping it closed/commercial
> code). In fact, upstream has not had the resources to review and
> maintain community patches even for the qt3 version. Another project,
> "qcadfree" [2], has incorporated community patches and is actually
> what Debian has been using as "qcad" since Nov, 2009. That project has
> stalled and does not appear to be porting to qt4. If no qt4 qcad is
> released, qcad will be removed from Debian.
> 
> Recently, a new project started that ported the qcadfree project to
> qt4 using qt3support libraries.
> http://www.librecad.org/
> http://sourceforge.net/projects/librecad/
> 
> Since this project is continuing the lineage that Debian has followed,
> I am preparing a package for Debian. ITP [3] and git repos are up [4],
> as is a PPA [5] for testing by Ubuntu users. It is still in beta but
> have made good progress, and they have accepted all Debian patches to
> qcad into their project. Additionally, the author intends to add CAM
> support to interface with Mechmates [6] and such. I encourage
> debian-science users to help with testing so that we have a viable
> qcad replacement when it is removed in a few months. At that point
> qcad will probably become a transitional packaging depending on
> librecad, barring any objections.
> 
> There is also a KDE4 port that is semi-active if someone is interested in it:
> http://kad.tuxfamily.org/
> http://git.tuxfamily.org/kad/kad?p=gitroot/kad/kad.git;a=shortlog;h=refs/heads/kde4
> 
> 
> Cheers,
> Scott
> 
> 
> [1] http://bugs.debian.org/cgi-bin/bugreport.cgi?bug=604595
> [2] http://sites.google.com/site/qcadfree/
> [3] http://bugs.debian.org/cgi-bin/bugreport.cgi?bug=605914
> [4] http://git.debian.org/?p=debian-science/packages/librecad.git
> [5] https://launchpad.net/~showard314/+archive/librecad
> [6] http://www.mechmate.com/
>