digiKam 5.3.0 is published…

Dear digiKam fans and users,

After a 3rd release 5.2.0 published more than one month ago, the digiKam team is proud to announce the new release 5.3.0 of digiKam Software Collection. This version introduces an important common solution to deploy the application under Linux using AppImage bundle.

AppImage is an open-source project dedicated to provide a simple way to distribute portable software as compressed binary file, that standard user can run as well, without to install special dependencies. All is included into the bundle, as last Qt5 and KF5 frameworks. AppImage use Fuse file-system, which is de-compressed into a temporary directory to start the application. You don't need to install digiKam on your system to be able to use it. Better, you can use the official digiKam from your Linux distribution in parallel, and test the new version without any conflict with one used in production. This permit to quickly test a new release without to wait an official package dedicated for your Linux box. Another AppImage advantage is to be able to provide quickly a pre-release bundle to test last patches applied to source code, outside the releases plan.

The bundle include main 3rd-party libraries used by digiKam as Lensfun, OpenCV, and Exiv2. All are optimized for digiKam, and without extra or experimental configurations which can crash the application in special cases.

The simple way to use the digiKam AppImage is to download the right file for your system (32 bits or 64 bits), to make it executable, and to run it. See AppImage documentation if you need more information about.

With the continuous help of Wolfgang Scheffner, The digiKam handbook have been updated again and is available on-line at digiKam. All help are welcome to contribute on user manual, by writing sections, proof-reading, translating, etc.

For further information, take a look into the list of more than 40 files currently closed in Bugzilla. A special thanks to Maik Qualmaan who improve code everywhere.

digiKam software collection source code tarball, Linux 32/64 bits AppImage bundles, MacOS package, and Windows 32/64 bits installers can be downloaded from this repository

Happy digiKaming!