Preparation for FreeCAD 1.1 release

[furgo16]

• Pin pip versions in snapcraft.yaml
• Update the candidate channel to point to the 1.1 branch once it's created, on October 29th: 🚀 Release Branch and Formatting Update for FreeCAD 1.1 FreeCAD#24758
• Merge master into stable branch => 1.1rc1: Merge changes from master branch into stable #259
• Make a stable 1.1 release: https://github.com/FreeCAD/FreeCAD-snap/blob/master/docs/index.md#how-to-make-a-new-stable-release

[furgo16]

@chennes given that the Qt 6 snap now appears to be working, and pending testing of the remaining blockers fixed on #220, I'm considering making the core24 Qt 6 snap the default for FreeCAD 1.1. It is currently available in the edge/qt6 snap store channel, and the code is in the core24-kde-neon-6 branch on this repo. My proposal would be, in the next few days:

• Upload the core24 Qt 6 snap to the edge channel, replacing the core22 Qt 5 snap. This is the build that ultimately will be uploaded to the stable channel on release day
• Close the edge/qt6 channel
• Open an edge/qt5 channel, which will be the recipient of the daily core22 Qt 5 builds
• Open a stable/qt5 channel, to which the edge/qt5 build on the day of release will be manually promoted to
• Daily builds remain as they are: both core22 Qt 5 and core24 Qt 6 snaps will keep being built, at least until the 1.2 release. If users have snap-specific blocking issues that cannot be fixed timely, they can always go back to the core22 Qt 5 app
• Announce this change on the forum

Pros:

• We'll be ultimately moving to one modern snap configuration by default. The goal would be to archive the core22 snap branch and turn off the core22 Qt 5 builds by FreeCAD 1.2
• It prevents users from experiencing Qt-5-specific bugs, and FreeCAD developers to fix them
• core24 brings more up-to-date packages with bug fixes, which also simplify the structure of the snapcraft.yaml file => better maintainability
• Qt 6 itself I believe has been tested for a while in the FreeCAD upstream weekly builds (note though we're using 6.9.1 in the snap, whereas the weekly builds are on 6.8.3, I think)

Cons:

• The snap itself has not been tested during the development cycle, as the Qt 6 blocker fix arrived just recently
• I need to test that at least FEM: Missing Elmer CSC builds for Ubuntu 24.04 #223 was fixed. It might take a few days, and it's getting tight to get it done before release date.

To me, the better maintainability is the key. Regardless of what we do, at some point we'll need to migrate away from the core22 snap or Qt 5 because either will be EOL, or some dependencies FreeCAD will need in the future will no longer be available there. Maintaining two sets of snaps and freecad-deps-snaps, with their corresponding builds, is not sustainable. So better migrate now than too late. And we have a fallback whereby in the transition period we can switch snap channels to bring back the core22 Qt 5 snap to users in case of grave issues.

On a personal note, the Qt 6 snap has been a year in the making, with mostly back and forth with KDE upstream. I honestly just want to get it done and focus on developing the BIM workbench rather than hacking on packaging.

[chennes]

I trust your judgment here: I use Qt6 as my daily driver, so I am happy to see that we can finally migrate the snap.

[furgo16]

I've started the process of publishing 1.1rc1 into the candidate channel => https://github.com/FreeCAD/FreeCAD-snap/actions/runs/19753425387