News
KGeoTag 1.0 coming soon
Notice: This blog post was added after KGeoTag's homepage was set up. Originally, it had been posted on nasauber.de.
This isn't just something about a new release of some software. This is a milestone in my personal "FLOSS carrer". KGeoTag, a photo geotagging program based on KDE and Qt technology, is the very first program I wrote that will be an official part of the KDE SC, thus potentially finding it's way into the repos of the big (and small?!) Linux distributions!
I have been a KDE developer since 2014 now, after joining the KPhotoAlbum project. I barely knew C++ or Qt back then, but with a lot of help and most of all forbearing coaching of Johannes Zarl-Zierl, I learned a lot about "real" software development and finally did the step from script languages towards C++ and Qt (which is something I literally should have done at least a decade earlier).
But let's talk about what this is actually about ;-)
KGeoTag: A new Linux geotagging program
Due to the "geolocation" KIPI plugin being gone for quite some time now, the lack of a decent geotagging program for the Linux ecosystem worried me quite a lot. I used GpsPrune and played around with some GUIs for CLI-driven geotagging programs like GPS correlate, but none was – in my humble opinion – really good or usable in a nice way.
So I decided to start writing a new geotagging program. Placed into the KDE ecosystem, I chose the obvious name "KGeoTag" and did the first commit on 07.10.2020, in a new private repository on KDE invent, KDE's recently introduced GitLab infrastructure.
After implementing the basic functionality, I wrote to the kde-devel mailing list, introduced the project and asked if this was something KDE would need. Apparently, I was not the only one thinking this would enrich the KDE SC. On 31.10.2020, the repo was moved from my private projects to it's new "official" location graphics/kgeotag (still being a "playground" project). After passing the KDE review process, it finally became an official "extragear/graphics" project on 28.12.2020.
Thank you, guys :-)
I'm really, really proud of KGeoTag being accepted as a part of KDE. After all, I'm just a dentist and only a hobby programmer. I don't earn my money with writing code, like most of the other KDE devs do.
I want to thank again Johannes for making all this possible (after all, he's the very reason I know a bit C++/Qt now ;-), as well as the KDE community for giving me such a warm reception for this project. I also want to thank Ben Cooksley, the KDE Sysadmin, for supporting me via moving stuff around, setting up the IRC channel #kde-kgeotag on Freenode, creating a mailing list, setting up CI and so on. Also thanks to Isaac Wismer, the first "real" beta tester of KGeoTag, adding precious ideas as well as code. Let's also not forget the diligent and enthusiastic KDE translators, first of all Yuri Chornoivan, who already translated KGeoTag into several languages despite the whole thing being not even being officially released yet!
All you guys really rock :-D That's how that Open Source thingy works.
I'm really looking forward to finally do the first release of KGeoTag. Let's see how far I (we) will get ;-)