Schedule for and Status of the Xfce 4.16 Development Cycle

Schedule
libxfce4panel
Roadmap / Planned Features
Features that Affect the Entire Xfce Core
Modules
Changes in Dependencies
Other planned changes

Schedule

Read the Xfce Release Model to understand why this cycle is the way it is.

Dates	Phase/Deadline	Everyone's Tasks	Release Team Tasks	Maintainer Tasks
2019-08-13 - 2019-09-30	Planning Phase	Elect the release team, discuss dependencies
2019-10-01 - 2019-10-15	Extended Planning Phase			May request dependency changes
2019-10-18	Dependency Freeze		Update dependency info, inform community about the decisions made (dependencies, unguaranteed feature preview)
2019-10-20 - April 2020	Development Phase	Support Xfce	Supervise development, remind people of deadlines
May	Release Phase	Wait patiently	Perform releases, remind people of deadlines	Perform releases of own components if desired
2020-08-27	Xfce 4.16pre1 (Soft String Freeze)		Prepare release announcements, release Xfce 4.16pre1	Make sure the latest development release is in good shape and uploaded. Try to avoid making string changes since this release will most likely skip pre3!
2020-11-19	Xfce 4.16pre2 (String + Code Freeze)		Prepare release announcements, release Xfce 4.16pre2	Make sure that strings in the latest development release or in master are good
October December	~~Xfce 4.16pre3 (Final Freeze)~~		~~This is an optional release (release team decides whether we need or skip it in favor of the final release)~~
December	Xfce 4.16 (Final Release)	Celebrate	Prepare release announcements, release Xfce 4.16, branch for stable release, merge ELS branches into master	Make sure to upload a new release of own components before this deadline

Roadmap / Planned Features

Features that Affect the Entire Xfce Core

General UI
Use CSD (client-side decorations) for XfceTitledDialog and potentially apps: Review of current Xfwm4 decorations vs. CSD
Drop support for Gtk2
Create a new icon set with application icons for Xfce that will be shipped as part of the components
Switch to icons rDNS naming for icons and desktop files
Replace certain general icons with their symbolic counterparts, e.g. “window-close” with “window-close-symbolic” (otherwise they look bad in Dark Mode apps or with dark themes)
Migrate from exo-csource to xdt-csource: projects using exo-csource needs to be updated (need to call the new binary)

Modules

Please don't take the features listed on these pages as obligatory. Keep in mind that they may or may not make it into the 4.16 release, depending on the time the individual developers have.

Module	Assignee	Status	Progress
exo	Sean, Andre		70%
libxfce4ui	Simon	Done	100%
libxfce4util	-	Done
thunar	Andre, Alex	In Progress	50%
xfce4-appfinder
xfce4-panel	Simon	In Progress	85%
xfce4-session	Simon	In Progress	80%
xfce4-settings	Simon, Sean	In Progress	80%
xfconf	Ali		90%
xfdesktop
xfwm4	Olivier		10%
xfce4-power-manager	Simon	In Progress	85%
tumbler
garcon	Simon	Done	100%
thunar-volman
xfce4-dev-tools	Skunnyk		99%

Dependencies

pkgconfig
automake
autoconf
libtool
gtk+-3.0 >= 3.22
- Same version for gdk-3.0.
glib-2.0 >= 2.50
- Same version for gmodule-2.0, gobject-2.0, gthread-2.0, gio-2.0 and gdbus
gdk-pixbuf-2.0 >= 2.30
cairo >= 1.12
vte3 >= 0.38
libwnck3
upower-0.99
consolekit / systemd

Changes in Dependencies

Drop optional Gtk2 dependency
New dependency on libgtop (system information in libxfce4ui/xfce4-about)
glib-2.0 minimum 2.42 –> 2.50

Other planned changes

Migrate our Git setup to a self-hosted GitLab instance: DONE
Enable basic GitLab CI setup: DONE
Migrate Bugzilla to GitLab: DONE