New module decisions for 2.24

[Vincent Untz <vuntz gnome org>]

Hi,

The release team had a meeting yesterday about various things, including
the module proposals. Here are the decisions we took on this topic.

Many thanks to the people who contributed to the discussion on the list,
and to the authors and maintainers of the proposed modules!


Short summary
=============

In:
  empathy (desktop suite)
  project hamster (desktop suite)
  clutter (external dependency)
  libcanberra (external dependency)
  PolicyKit & PolicyKit-gnome (external dependency)

In, but not as expected:
  conduit (external dependency)

Out:
  libgda
  WebKit/GTK+

Removed:
  gtksourceview (replaced by gtksourceview2)
  libgnomeprint & libgnomeprintui (replaced by API in gtk+)


Details
=======

 + clutter (external dependency):
   - general consensus around it and people want to play with it
   - there's not a lot of code depending on it right now (not sure
     there'll be anything in the 2.24 timeframe) but it's a chicken &
     egg problem and people have really shown interest in it
   => approved
      It's important to not have clutter-only UIs for now (for
      accessibility reasons), though.

 + libcanberra (external dependency):
   - some +1 on the lists, and already used in some parts of GNOME
   - would have been nice to see it come earlier in the cycle
   => approved

 + libgda (external dependency):
   - applications using libgda are not ported to 4.0 yet
   - no real support on the mailing list
   => rejected
      For the anjuta plugin using it: we suggest to either make it
      optional or ship it separetely of the main anjuta module.

 + PolicyKit & PolicyKit-gnome (external dependencies):
   - the plan is to have PolicyKit-gnome in the desktop set for 2.26
   - people are already using it and there's some good consensus around
     it
   - helps improve accessibility of security-related UIs
   - this is a good first step towards inclusion in the desktop set
     later
   => approved

 + WebKit/GTK+ (external dependency):
   - lots of community support
   - accessibility support might not be good enough (no reply from
     WebKit/GTK+ people)
   - epiphany will still use Gecko for 2.24
   - yelp is still using Gecko at the moment (there's a WebKit branch)
   - devhelp trunk is WebKit-only
   - evolution people intend to use WebKit in 2.26
   - we'd prefer to avoid depending on both Gecko and WebKit at the same
     time
   => rejected for 2.24, but we'll propose a general switch for 2.26

 + conduit (desktop)
   - amazing participation of the maintainer in the discussion
   - the major problem still is the UI, though. We think it should be
     mainly integrated in the applications that will use synchronization
     instead of being a brand new UI.
   - we really want what conduit offers
   => rejected, but we bless it as an external dependency so that
      applications can start using it, and so that it gets ready for
      integration in 2.26.

 + empathy (desktop)
   - we only consider the application here and trust the telepathy plans
     to offer LGPL libraries
   - empathy is getting some support in the community
   - we want to start telepathy integration
   => approved, but the licensing question is highly important to us and
      we really urge the telepathy community to fix this

 + project hamster (desktop)
   - well-maintained
   - people like it
   - the main objection is about whether we should accept all good
     software in official GNOME or not. The release team thinks it's
     something that the 3.0 proposal aims to fix, so that shouldn't be
     considered at the moment.
   => approved if moved in GNOME SVN
      SVN module should be created (bug #545049), releases should be
      published on the GNOME FTP and the module should be added to
      Damned Lies.
      Also following the GNOME version numbers would be good.

 + gtksourceview 1 (removal from desktop set)
   => not an issue, so removed

 + libgnomeprint & libgnomeprintui (removal from desktop set)
   - Mike Kestner will work on splitting the C# bindings out of
     gnome-desktop-sharp
   => will be removed once this is done


Thanks,

Vincent

-- 
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