Announce 3.3.0-alpha5

_posts/2023-11-13-calamares-3.3.alpha5-is-out.md

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+---
+published: true
+layout: post
+title: "Calamares 3.3.0-alpha5 released"
+excerpt_separator: <!--more-->
+---
+
+A month to the day, and we have reached the next -- and also last --
+alpha release along the road to Calamares 3.3.
+More internal changes to cross off items on the TODO list:
+Boost can be replaced by pybind11 (and it is, by default)
+to make the Python modules less dependent on external libraries.
+We're happy to have contributors helping out with the
+translation of Calamares into more languages than ever before.
+
+This release contains contributions from (alphabetically by first name):
+ - Adriaan de Groot
+ - Alejo Fernandez
+ - Anke Boersma
+ - Christophe Marin
+ - Emir Sari
+ - Evan James
+ - Gaël PORTAY
+ - Gecko Linux
+ - Jeremy Whiting
+ - Neal Gompa
+
+## Core ##
+ - Boost::Python is no longer a dependency, Calamares uses a bundled copy
+   of pybind11 instead. This speeds up compilation and reducese the
+   dependency tree a great deal. You can set `WITH_PYBIND11=OFF` in the
+   build to keep Boost::Python and all the binary-compatibility problems
+   it entails.
+ - Coding style now wants clang-format 15 or 16, but no longer needs astyle.
+   There is also a clang-tidy file for additional styling support.
+ - Ongoing translation improvements. (thanks Emir)
+ - Translations for bqi (Luri), es_AR (Castellano), eo (Esperanto),
+   ka (Georgian). In **non-release** builds (e.g. between releases,
+   so for developers building directly from git) all translations are
+   enabled, even the ones with no translations at all.
+ - The logging format in the `session.log` file and on-screen is now
+   more similar, although the file contains a lot more per-line information.
+ - The INSTALL_CONFIG option has been restored. It is still a terrible
+   idea to fork the repository to modify the config files, and you
+   probably should have a calamares-config package with those files
+   instead, there are packaging workflows that can usefully patch-and-
+   install configuration files. The option defaults to OFF.
+
+## Modules ##
+ - All QML modules now have a Qt6-compatible set of QML files as well. (thanks Anke)
+ - *packagechooser* supports AppStream 1.0 API.
+ - *unpackfs* now uses the `-S` option to rsync for sparse file support. (thanks Jeremy)
+
+## TODO ##
+
+All of the TODOs which I had planned for a 3.3.0 release are now done.
+
+## Feedback ##
+
+If you experience an issue with Calamares, please tell us all about it
+on the [**Calamares issue tracker**][1]. For a full change list, see
+the full list of [issues closed][2] within the current generation (which is many releases).
+
+[1]: https://github.com/calamares/calamares/issues
+[2]: https://github.com/calamares/calamares/milestone/82