KDevelop4 Beta 3 Released

mikesd81 writes "KDE announced on May 30th the third public beta of KDevelop4. Some new features include a new code-writing assistant, a new documentation plugin showing you the API docs for Qt and KDE APIs, a reworked Mercurial plugin, and a rewrite of the classbrowser plugin. Two plugins from the KDevelop source, QMake support and Qt Designer integration, were let go and moved to the KDE Playground area."

Comments

troll

[nthitz]

fir

Kool

[bonch]

Ksounds kfantastic. Ki kwonder kwhat kind kof kapps kwill karrise kfrom kthe kode-writing kassistant. KDE--kwhere kbad knaming khumor kreigns ksupreme! Kekeke.

Re:Kool

[Anonymous Coward]

Klippy?

Re:Kool

[NervousNerd]

Kit klooks klike kyour kwriting ka kletter, kwould kyou klike khelp?

Re:Kool

[Anonymous Coward]

KKK.

Re:Kool

[Anonymous Coward]

That joke is getting so old. I wouldn't be surprised if the reason that tons of new KDE apps no longer have a 'K' is just because the developers are sick of people like you who think they're hilarious.

Re:Kool

[Anonymous Coward]

That joke is getting so old. I wouldn't be surprised if the reason that tons of new KDE apps no longer have a 'K' is just because the developers are sick of people like you who think they're hilarious.

Maybe the reason is that most of us are not 12 years old anymore, and are sick of the whole concept of putting random letters in front of every word.

Re:Kool

[Anonymous Coward]

Still seems to work for Apple... ;)

Re:Kool

[BlackCreek]

It works for Apple who used a vowel present in any language, instead of a fucking voiceless consonant that sounds horrible in almost any language.

Try saying _i_ 20 times in a row, now try saying _k'_. Your throat appreciates the difference.

code writing assistant

[Anonymous Coward]

I already have a code assistant, he's called Intern 1.0, he does all the shit work I don't want to do, and when I don't know how to do something, he figures it out, lays out the algorithm for me, and then I take the credit.

Since he doesn't have a family or girlfriend, he also works about twice the number of hours I do.

I don't see how KDevelop can improve on that.

Re:code writing assistant

[Archangel Michael]

I always knew that Anonymous Coward was the BOFH, now I finally have proof!!!!

You sir, are my hero!

Fantastic

[12357bd]

Maybe the best free C/C++ IDE. For other languages old & true Netbeans or Eclipse without a doubt, but for C and C++, it's the only one me.

Thanks!

Re:Fantastic

[delta419]

I just switch to from Eclipse to Kdevelop for PHP... I liked eclipse better, but whenever I run it I'm limited to 3 applications (sorry, couldn't resist)

Re:Fantastic

[HatofPig]

Highly recommend that everyone scroll through tons of pretty screenshots and feature lists on this developers blog which will give you a way better idea of how awesome KDevelop is going to be than the summary links will.

Re:Fantastic

[Anonymous Coward]

Highly recommend that everyone scroll through tons of pretty screenshots and feature lists on this developers blog which will give you a way better idea of how awesome KDevelop is going to be than the summary links will.

These awesome features sure as hell didn't do anything to improve the guy's coding style. Urgh.

Re:Fantastic

[mikesd81]

I must be missing the joke somewhere?

Re:Fantastic

[Anonymous Coward]

I just switch to from Eclipse to Kdevelop for PHP... I liked eclipse better, but whenever I run it I'm limited to 3 applications (sorry, couldn't resist)

FAIL.

Who cares.

[Anonymous Coward]

Why would I want to use KDevelop4 when I can use Eclipse? Eclipse -- thanks to it's use of Java -- runs much faster and requires less memory than KDevelop4 and it's antiquated use of C++. Eclipse has far more features and plug-ins, and I can use it on highly secure uncrackable systems such as Windows Vista instead of being limited to virus/trojan/spyware plagued Linsux.

Re:Who cares.

[hahaitrolledyou]

Linux just isn't ready for the software programmer. It may be ready for the web servers that you nerds use to distribute your TRON fanzines and personal Dungeons and Dragons web-sights across the world wide web, but the average computer programmer isn't going to spend months learning how to use a CLI and then hours compiling packages so that they can get a workable graphic interface to use with their IDE, especially not when they already have a Windows machine that does its job perfectly well with Visual Studio and is backed by a major corporation, as opposed to Linux which is only supported by a few unemployed nerds living in their mother's basement somewhere. The last thing I want is a level 5 dwarf (haha) providing me my OS.

Re:Who cares.

[Forge]

I'm a Level 6 Elf, you insensitive clod. And why are you making such a big deal of malware? I havn't been hit by a single trojan since I installed the Latest Macafee and started doing update/scan on my Linux box every day and stoped opening email attachments. It's been 2 months of hassle free computing.

Re:Who cares.

[gzipped_tar]

The last thing I want is a level 5 dwarf (haha) providing me my OS.

But it's a level 5 dwarf with the genuine Amulet of Yendor!

Re:Who cares.

[Anonymous Coward]

Why would I want to use KDevelop4 when I can use Eclipse? Eclipse -- thanks to it's use of Java -- runs much faster and requires less memory than KDevelop4 and it's antiquated use of C++. Eclipse has far more features and plug-ins, and I can use it on highly secure uncrackable systems such as Windows Vista instead of being limited to virus/trojan/spyware plagued Linsux.

Am I the only one that finds this funny? Everything she says it teh opposite of the truth.

Re:Who cares.

[RiotingPacifist]

dunny why this is "troll" its hilarious!

kdevelop is great

[iplayfast]

Last week when everyone was talking about their favorite ide's I kept thinking that kdevelop should have this or has that.

It's the one IDE that I've used for Linux development (besides vi) that I've used for years. I'm looking forward to the new class browser.

STL container visualization...

[GenP]

How does it handle display of STL containers in the debugger view?

Re:STL container visualization...

[Anonymous Coward]

Why can't I stuff auto_ptr's into STL objects? I always get leaks.

Re:STL container visualization...

[DoofusOfDeath]

How does it handle display of STL containers in the debugger view?

I don't know, but isn't GDB supposed to be adding a pretty-print plugin system so that people can write pretty-printers for various STL containers, etc.?

Maybe once GDB supports that, KDevelop will inherit that functionality for free?

Watcom C++

[moon3]

I love KDevelop/GCC, but it is also nice to have some options. The massive reliance on GCC is becoming tiresome, especially if it still under performs, newest Intel's and Microsoft compilers are faster and produce better code..

The good old Watcom was rock solid compiler producing one of the best binaries at the time, also comes with good debugger and even decent IDE. It is open source now, see www.openwatcom.org. It has a stellar source base and potential to spawn another cross platform compiler to compete with GCC. It would be nice if we could swap GCC for something else.. This great and promising project needs developers badly!

Do not forget, it is Watcom that compiled and gave us Duke Nukem, Doom, Termial Velocity, Frontier and all the DOS4GW titles.

Re:Watcom C++

[EzInKy]

Having nearly completely forgotten about Open Watcom since I first heard about it years ago I was quite eager to see how far the project had come. Unfortunately, even though I did find a page with developer documentation for different processors, I had trouble discerning which architectures the compiler currently supports. The few pdfs I downloaded seem to indicate that it is pretty much limited to 16 and 32 bit x86. Is this actually the case?
 

Re:Watcom C++

[ardor]

Intel's icc is a collection of special cases. If your code does not fit into this grid of special cases, it will be slow.
Your actual answer is called LLVM.

Re:Watcom C++

[Rob Riggs]

Yes, when Intel and MSFT make compilers that target UltraSPARC, Itanic, and POWER (all, not some) then I'll have a look-see again.

Open Watcom enjoys virtually no support. It is not going anywhere. It's another sucky piece of code that was no longer competitive in the marketplace. It needs developers like a fish needs a bicycle. No one in their right mind would waste time adding support for this compiler to KDevelop.

You know, the only people that I know that seriously dislike GCC are the commercial compiler venders. It's not perfect, but it has a major advantage that no other compiler has -- it frees the developer from worrying about vendor specific compiler issues when writing cross-platform code. One less thing to worry about.

Re:Watcom C++

[Kjella]

You know, the only people that I know that seriously dislike GCC are the commercial compiler venders. It's not perfect, but it has a major advantage that no other compiler has -- it frees the developer from worrying about vendor specific compiler issues when writing cross-platform code. One less thing to worry about.

To me it's basicly like this - either the compiler's performance hardly matters at all, the code's performance is restricted by user speed, network speed or whatever OR it's incredibly performance oriented. If it's incredibly performance oriented, typically someone will make an assembler library that does that as efficiently as at all possible. Compiler performance is for the inbetweens where it's sorta important but not important enough. If you hit a performance bottleneck, very often it's a higher-level code issue that's better fixed there. The number of real-world cases where you really say "the code is good, the compiler's stupid and it's important yet not too important and changing the compiler is the difference between acceptable and not acceptable" is really low. There's a million things I could take issue wtih when it comes to open source, but gcc is not one of them.

Re:Watcom C++

[d43m0n13]

Actually, KDevelop (at least version 3) has a very nice Intel C++ support, and Sun's compiler (whatever it's called nowadays) support too, I think. Even if KDevelop didn't support a particular compiler, the only thing missing would be the jump-to-error functionality.

And Watcom, is, well, irrelevant (ISO C++, anyone?).

Re:Watcom C++

[moon3]

needs developers like a fish needs a bicycle

I would not discourage potential developers like this, we all know that GCC is not perfect and that is (partly) because there is no real open source project to compete with GCC. I wasted many hours of my life waiting for GCC to finish its sluggish job.

Years are passing by and the old problems with GCC are not disappearing. Thousands of developers have to struggle with it daily. There sure is a place for alternative compiler with different source code architecture, source code versioning system etc. that would suit different kind of devs that do not particularly like GCC's internals and how the code is managed.

Re:Watcom C++

[sketerpot]

If you'd like an actual C/C++ compiler that uses LLVM, try either llvm-gcc or Clang, which is probably going to be a serious competitor to gcc in a year or two.

Re:Watcom C++

[mikesd81]

All I could find was an i586 rpm

Re:Watcom C++

[Rob Riggs]

I would not discourage potential developers like this, we all know that GCC is not perfect and that is (partly) because there is no real open source project to compete with GCC.

I would and do, because I fundamentally disagree with your premise. If developers are going spend time on a compiler, do it on a compiler that targets multiple platforms, not just slightly different operating systems on the same CPU. Getting an optimizing compiler right across multiple CPU architectures is HARD. GCC has already forked twice in my experience (pgcc, egcs). If needed, it will happen again. In this way all open source programs are their own competition.

The real problem with GCC is that there are not enough developers working on it. The number of people that can usefully contribute to a compiler like GCC is vanishingly small. Even those that have compiler experience rarely have experience with handling the subtle and not so subtle differences between completely different CPU families. Encouraging that group to fracture even further is an even bigger sin in my book.

Lest anyone think otherwise, I don't see any need to fork GCC. I have not seen the developers reject reasonable enhancements from contributors. On the contrary; they don't have enough developers working to support new chips, keep up with new language features, and fix outstanding issues.

Re:Watcom C++

[Anonymous Coward]

maybe we should, I don't know ... Fork gcc. We could call it .. uhm... the Experimental/Enhanced GNU Compiler System or egcs for short.

Re:Watcom C++

[moon3]

real problem with GCC is that there are not enough developers working on it

Sony, Google and Apple that rely on GCC in everything from iPhone, OS X, Android to Sony's Playstation 3 should be dropping millions on this project. One would assume that the GCC developers are well off and covered by big corporate donors. Why is that not so?

Looking at GNU GCC web page, it really strikes me, that project of such an importance and gravity has such a poor on-line presence.

No wonder that the group of developers is very small then. GNU should really restructuralize and set their priorities straight. GCC is the very core, so GNU should focus that instead of doing gimmicky with GNUStep and other truly non-important projects at this time.

I can guarantee you that Apple and Sony managers are not even aware that their business is running on GCC. They do not know, do not understand or have no idea. Even if they would, the GCC page is not authoritative enough to sway their opinions or push them to take action. Sadly that is the reality of this world. People at helm are not technically inclined. They do not understand this.

Nice example how to run non-profit project and cover the developers is the FreeBSD and their foundation. freebsdfoundation.orgThere are lots of businesses donating, because they have a dedicated channel to do so. GNU/GCC is missing on a shitload of cash from Google and others. GCC is stagnating now, maybe because of what I stated, that is hurting everybody involved, those devs active on GCC and also those that have to use that software.

Re:Watcom C++

[larry bagina]

I can't speak for any of the others, but Apple is fairly active in gcc development. They keep their own branch but submit a lot back. They're also active in llvm and are using it in their opengl stack, iphone sdk, and opencl (grand central) in 10.6.

The developer pool is small because:

• gcc is mature and generally works
• gcc is a monolithic mess and there is a steep learning curve to understanding and improving it
• the number of people with the time, inclination, and skill to work on it is small. Many are paid (by apple, red hat, etc) to do it.

Great! Maybe they'll fix KDE4 now.

[SanityInAnarchy]

Yeah, I know I'm offtopic and trolling, and I should be filing bug reports instead...

But yeah, thanks for the NetworkManager widget. Now my WPA-enabled wireless networks don't work.

WTF, KDE?

I look forward to having my touchpad break in KDE 4.3, and my keyboard break in KDE 4.4, and maybe, just maybe, a beta-quality release by KDE 4.5.

Re:Great! Maybe they'll fix KDE4 now.

[ScytheBlade1]

So many mod points, so many different trolls in this thread. I'll reply to you.

If you hate it that badly, stop using it. The NM plasma applet is still considered beta, if not alpha quality. If your WPA wifi network doesn't work, then either NM itself broke or your controlling program sucks; it is probably the latter here. Install nm-applet (the gnome one) or knetworkmanager (kde 3.5 based) and you'll be off and running.

No, there isn't a proper NM manager for KDE4 yet. Take it or leave it. Soon, with any luck.

>> I look forward to having my touchpad break in KDE 4.3, and my keyboard break in KDE 4.4, and maybe, just maybe, a beta-quality release by KDE 4.5.

You could have just left this out and you'd have a much more respectable (if offtopic) post.

Re:Great! Maybe they'll fix KDE4 now.

[SanityInAnarchy]

The NM plasma applet is still considered beta, if not alpha quality.

In which case, I should really be blaming Kubuntu for installing it and making it the default.

If your WPA wifi network doesn't work, then either NM itself broke or your controlling program sucks; it is probably the latter here. Install nm-applet (the gnome one) or knetworkmanager (kde 3.5 based) and you'll be off and running.

Indeed, both of these work. Which raises the question: Why did Kubuntu choose an alpha-quality app for this purpose?

You could have just left this out and you'd have a much more respectable (if offtopic) post.

It is getting frustrating, though. Either Kubuntu or KDE is making me focus entirely too much on just getting shit to work with every release.

Another example: Kubuntu 8.10 was released without working Bluetooth. Again, I had to use the GNOME applet to get any Bluetooth at all.

Another example: Every now and then, I get a notification (through the shiny new notification system) which won't go away. For example, a file transfer stuck at 0 bytes, can't be stopped or paused, the window can't be moved or killed, best I can do is hide it or restart Plasma.

Another example: A recent update to Kmail seems to have removed my ability to view messages in a threaded fashion, making it useless for mailing lists.

Another example: In KDE3, I could choose "hibernate" from the logout screen, meaning I could hibernate entirely with the keyboard. Now, I have to click and hold on the "Turn off" button to get options to hibernate or suspend.

Another example: Gwenview, using the zip:// KIO handler, crashes frequently. Hell, most of what I use crashes somewhat -- even krunner. How do you fuck up an "enter command here" dialog to where it crashes periodically?

Another example: The crash handler doesn't always appear, meaning I sometimes have to reproduce a bug many times (like 5 or 10) before I actually get a trace. Can you guess why I don't like to report bugs?

Another example: I've caught kded using 100% CPU. Now, kded is a program whose sole purpose in life seems to be updating config files. Again, how do you fuck this up to where it eats 100% CPU, and refuses to write changes?

Another example: It seems very difficult to find a widget that doesn't get screwed up by my font settings. Not sure what I've done that makes it this way, but according to my clock widget, it is now 3:38 pm Tue, 2 Jur

A few of these I can see being somewhat obscure, and not necessarily easy to reproduce. But the clock? WPA? Bluetooth?

I want to like KDE. I really do. I loved KDE3, and I'm loving most of KDE4.

But this is getting absurd.

Either Kubuntu or KDE itself is nearly giving me enough material to open a Daily KDE WTF. Every major Ubuntu release breaks something critically important to a lot of users -- like, oh, Bluetooth, or wireless. The fact that those are fixed in the next release doesn't really help, when the next release is likely to break something else also.

Re:Great! Maybe they'll fix KDE4 now.

[lwsimon]

Good to know. I've been doing all my network stuff from an xterm for a long time, but didn't know there was a valid reason for it other than my being too damned lazy to look for a GUI app.

Re:Great! Maybe they'll fix KDE4 now.

[Zontar The Mindless]

Good to know. I've been doing all my network stuff from an xterm for a long time, but didn't know there was a valid reason for it other than my being too damned lazy to look for a GUI app.

Oh, gee, and I thought it was because every network manager I've tried has sucked arse. I'll stick with ifconfig and friends.

(This from an ex-Windows guy. Lo, how the mighty have fallen.)

Will we get another "don't use me yet" "release"?

[GeekDork]

As seen with KDE 4.0 ("Can't even save printer settings"), and now KOffice 2.0 ("Who needs a settings dialog anyway?")?

Seriously, someone needs to find who wrote the fucking memo that says you can have all the regressions you want as long as your applications use Qt4.

Typical FOSS

[Anonymous Coward]

"a new documentation plugin showing you the API docs for Qt and KDE APIs"

"QMake support and Qt Designer integration"

Oh joy! Such an achievement. Now I'm going to code an IDE too, it'll have a text editor, and it will be able to invoke a compiler. Is that a news ? *sigh*

Eclipse is the best open source free IDE I have ever used (for all languages).

Other than that... Nothing can match Visual Studio. Period.

Re:Typical FOSS

[ultrabot]

Other than that... Nothing can match Visual Studio. Period.

It's not necessary to match Visual Studio. It's important to be good enough. Many programmers are still relying on non-IDEs, so VS level operation is far from necessary.

I don't recall having an open source linux-compatible version of Visual Studio.

Re:Typical FOSS

[xtracto]

"a new documentation plugin showing you the API docs for Qt and KDE APIs"

"QMake support and Qt Designer integration"

Oh joy! Such an achievement. Now I'm going to code an IDE too, it'll have a text editor, and it will be able to invoke a compiler. Is that a news ? *sigh*

Eclipse is the best open source free IDE I have ever used (for all languages).

Other than that... Nothing can match Visual Studio. Period.

I agree on the remark that Visual Studio is really good (and so far, better than any Open Source alternative).
Now, talking specifically about KDevelop, I lost love for it during Kdevelop 3 because when I used it was very very really unstable and the workflow didn't feel right (I was fighting the IDE while trying to program).

I have been using QTCreator for the C++ work I do (I really like the QT library) and Code::Blocks for the odd C utility (I *really* detest wxWidgets).
Oh, and I also agree about Eclipse. It is a really good piece of software (have you seen Xmind?) I use it for Java which is the language of choice for the main programming languages...

Re:Will we get another "don't use me yet" "release

[ultrabot]

Seriously, someone needs to find who wrote the fucking memo that says you can have all the regressions you want as long as your applications use Qt4.

It's a new app, there is no such thing as a regression. Same applies to many other KDE4 progs.

That being said, C++ intelligence for KDevelop4 rocks. Too bad it's not as stable as Qt Creator yet (so I already sort of jumped the ship).

For kdevelop4, perhaps they could consider the approach taken by emacs for gdb integration as "competitive" measure- i.e. just act as all-singing, all dancing code showing frontend for gdb, with normal gdb console visible at all times. For many scenarios, dumbened frontends just can't hack it.

Re:Will we get another "don't use me yet" "release

[GeekDork]

It's a new app, there is no such thing as a regression. Same applies to many other KDE4 progs.

"many other KDE4 progs" are meant to be improvements of the originals, it says so right in the version number. I can't see any valid reasons to accept the state a lot of those major releases are in.

• KDE 4 itself has rather ugly corners, like e.g. SSL key management, printer management (kdeprint was apparently unmaintained, so the developers decided to stick with whatever the Qt team belched up).
• Amarok 2 had a major release that consistently failed to build a proper library (randomly missing tracks depending on the phase of the moon during import, ugly problems with extracting metadata), was prone to crash, and relies on Phonon for which there doesn't seem to be a reliable backend (xine can't even seek in FLAC of WavPack, gstreamer integration is sketchy at best).
• ... which is pretty much it for multimedia.
• Calling Plasma a rough takeoff would be too kind. But hey, it can haz flashy effects!!!1!
• The last release candidates of KOffice 2.0 had ugly font rendering, an extremely... esoteric font/style management, and the mentioned missing settings dialog. So tough luck if you want to e.g. show formatting characters like linebreaks.

There are probably more which I chose to forget about just to keep the blood pressure low.

Re:Will we get another "don't use me yet" "release

[ultrabot]

"many other KDE4 progs" are meant to be improvements of the originals, it says so right in the version number. I can't see any valid reasons to accept the state a lot of those major releases are in.

Version numbers are hardly a reliable indicator of quality when all/most of the code has changed behind the scenes.

Instead of all the vitriol, route around the problem. Use the Gnome/desktop agnostic counterparts of the programs until the devs fix their packages.

Also, this issue w/ KDE4 has been hashed out over and over again. New code gets written, bugs appear, bugs get fixed, world keeps turning, good time shall be had by all.

Re:Will we get another "don't use me yet" "release

[Kjella]

It's a new app, there is no such thing as a regression. Same applies to many other KDE4 progs.

Vista is a new OS, there is no such thing as a regression. Seriously, the amount of double standards you have to apply to bash Microsoft and not bash KDE4 is getting rather extrodinary. x.0 is the new "beta tester", x.1 is the new "QA/release tester", x.2 the old "x.0 early adopter" and x.3 or so is usable. I'm on Kubuntu 9.04/KDE4.2 considering when to migrate my parents from KDE3, but so far my conclusion is "not yet". There's still too many little WTFs so 9.10 LTS at the earliest I think.

Some ideas ...

[Anonymous Coward]

New Getting Started wizards:

  - Creating a new sound api
  - Creating new C library
  - Creating New GUI toolkit
  - Modifying the existing GObject plugin API so all existing plugins can be made incompatible

New features:

  - Changing README file in a project and bumping version numbers
  - Emacs emulation mode where users can run Vile
  - A version of screen for existing dockable terminal ... there are more which you guys can figure out after a couple of hours of beer.

Re:Will we get another "don't use me yet" "release

[Anonymous Coward]

It's the rewritten-from-scratch thing that makes them new apps and also makes it forgivable to release while not yet having caught up to the previous version. The alternative is not to release at all for a bloody long while while doing the catch-up, which is a bad idea just from the point of view of getting the new code tested in real use.
If Microsoft were to ever make a truly new OS, one that isn't just a hack on the current Windows codebase, we'd be seeing similar issues with it's early releases. Or they'd take ten years to polish in in-house.

Re:Will we get another "don't use me yet" "release

[Zontar The Mindless]

Amarok 2 had a major release that consistently failed to build a proper library (randomly missing tracks depending on the phase of the moon during import, ugly problems with extracting metadata), was prone to crash, and relies on Phonon for which there doesn't seem to be a reliable backend (xine can't even seek in FLAC of WavPack, gstreamer integration is sketchy at best).

... which is pretty much it for multimedia...

All the cool kids already know the 2-word answer for this one: "veal" + "sea".

Re:Will we get another "don't use me yet" "release

[BlackCreek]

Seriously, someone needs to find who wrote the fucking memo that says you can have all the regressions you want as long as your applications use Qt4.

It's a new app, there is no such thing as a regression. Same applies to many other KDE4 progs.

If it is a _new app_ why they keep using the same names, and increasing the version numbers? Which is the computing standard for "new version of app X".

Re:Will we get another "don't use me yet" "release

[GeekDork]

Version numbers are hardly a reliable indicator of quality when all/most of the code has changed behind the scenes.

Instead of all the vitriol, route around the problem. Use the Gnome/desktop agnostic counterparts of the programs until the devs fix their packages.

Still, the desktop environments are marketed as new pinnacles in shinyness and productivity, and breaking functionality that was very much alright in the predecessor (which in turn had a bunch of pending bugs that were supposedly going to be fixed in the next big release two years down the road) is indeed a regression. If this was some dumb little hobby project that lets cute kitties run across the screen, I'd be alright with that. If it is an environment that claims to be fit for production use, or has some shiny new major version number with some near-invisible blog entry begging users not to use it, that's idiocy.

Re:Will we get another "don't use me yet" "release

[True Grit]

Which is the computing standard for "new version of app X".

There isn't one, which is precisely why we're having these endless flamewars about the initial state of KDE 4.0 when it was released.