=== KDE on FreeBSD

Links: +
link:https://freebsd.kde.org/[KDE FreeBSD] URL: link:https://freebsd.kde.org/[https://freebsd.kde.org/] +
link:https://community.kde.org/FreeBSD[KDE Community FreeBSD] URL: link:https://community.kde.org/FreeBSD[https://community.kde.org/FreeBSD]

Contact: Adriaan de Groot <kde@FreeBSD.org>

The KDE on FreeBSD project packages the software from the KDE Community, along with dependencies and related software, for the FreeBSD ports tree.
The software includes a full desktop environment called KDE Plasma (for both X11 and Wayland) and hundreds of applications that can be used on any FreeBSD machine.

The KDE team (kde@) is part of desktop@ and x11@ as well, building the software stack to make FreeBSD beautiful and usable as a daily-driver graphics-based desktop machine.

*KDE Qt Patch Collection* The Qt Company did not release Qt 5.15 updates under Open Source licenses in 2021, leaving the Open Source 5.15 version lagging behind the proprietary release.
Qt 6 is released under an Open Source license, but for the world of Open Source software that requires Qt 5, there is still a need for updates.
The KDE Community fills that need by maintaining a curated set of patches -- generally backported from Qt6 -- to maintain the Open Source version of Qt 5.
FreeBSD ports now use this *KDE Qt Patch Collection*, rather than the outdated last Qt 5.15.2 release from the Qt Company.
This landed both in main and the last quarterly branch for 2021, since it brings important bugfixes.

==== KDE Stack

* *KDE Plasma Desktop* (all the `*/plasma5-*` ports) was updated to 5.23.5 at the start of the year. Since this happened very shortly after quarterly was branched, this was MFH'ed. The long-term-support release 5.24 landed mid-february. The FreeBSD ports do not stick to LTS releases, and will follow the regular release schedule. 5.24.3 landed on schedule in March.
* *KDE Gear* (the collection of KDE libraries and applicatious outside of the Frameworks and Plasma Desktop groups) was updated to 21.12.1 and MFH'ed. Monthy releases landed as well: 21.12.2 in February.
* *KDE Frameworks* have a monthly release cadence, so 5.90 landed in January, 5.91 in February and 5.92 in March.
* *KDE PIM* currently does not support Contacts stored in a Google account because Google has changed the available REST API.
* *astro/kstars* received its regularly scheduled updates.
* *deskutils/kalendar* was updated. It has now reached the 1.0 stage.
* *deskutils/kodaskanna* was added to the ports tree. It is a simple QR-code scanner for the desktop.
* *deskutils/latte-dock* is an alternative launcher for use in KDE Plasma Desktop and other environments. It was updated to 0.10.7 as part of its monthly releases.
* *devel/okteta*, an editor and viewer for binary data, was updated to 0.26.7, a regular bugfix release.
* *graphics/digikam*, the digital photography manager, was updated to 7.6.0. (Thanks Dima Panov)
* *graphics/kf5-kimageformats* has a new option enabling libheif and HEIC support.
* *graphics/kontrast* was added to the 'accessibility' category. This is a tool for checking color-combinations (e.g. for a website) for sufficient contrast and readability.
* *graphics/krita* was updated to the next big release, Krita 5. (Thanks Max Brazhnikov)
* *lang/kross-interpreters* was fixed for Ruby 3. (Thanks Yasuhiro Kimura)
* *sysutils/plasma5-discover* was updated to resolve some denial-of-service bugs in KDE infrastructure.
* *www/falkon* was updated. After a two-year wait, a new release of the KDE web browser built on Qt WebEngine (itself a wrapper around Chromium internals) arrived upstream and in ports.
* *x11/plasma5-plasma-workspace* now can properly edit login and account information.


==== Related Applications

* *devel/qtcreator* was updated to version 6. A new versioning model has been introduced by upstream, so this will now jump by major release number regularly. (Thanks to Florian Walpen)
* *irc/quassel* was updated. Quassel is a distributed IRC client (think of it as your own personal IRC bouncer).
* *misc/tellico* was updated. Tellico is a "collection manager", for instance collections of books, music, stamps, or FreeBSD releases.
* *net-im/nheko* was updated. This is one of a dozen Matrix clients available in the ports tree.

==== Elsewhere

* *archivers/7-zip* is the preferred tool for dealing with 7zip files; this affacts KDE applications that work with archives (like *archivers/ark*). We would like to thank makc@ for stewarding that update.
* *devel/libphonenumber* has bi-weekly updates to chase the exciting world of telephony details.
* *graphics/poppler* was updated to version 22.01. This version requires C{plus}{plus}17, which pushes a number of consumers to the newer C{plus}{plus} standard as well. Most consumers were fixed in advance.
