New module decisions for 2.26

[Vincent Untz <vuntz gnome org>]

Hi,

The release team met on Sunday to talk about the latest movies, the
forthcoming Australian Open, etc. but also to make fun of Andreas N. (we
won't reveal his last last name publicly -- but he's swedish and draws
various things). Hopefully, Andreas N. didn't notice that and he will
continue to be helpful :-) Oh, we also discussed the new modules
proposals and came to the following result.

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:
  brasero (desktop suite)
  evolution-mapi (desktop suite)
  gnome-user-share (desktop suite)
  DeviceKit-power (external dependency)
  farsight2 (external dependency)
  libgda (external dependency)
  libical (external dependency)
  libmapi (external dependency)
  libnotify (external dependency)
  libproxy (external dependency)
  Mono.Addins (external dependency)
  pulseaudio (external dependency)
  unique (external dependency)

Moved:
  intltool (from platform to external dependency)

Out:
  libseed
  WebKit/GTK+

Out, but because they are not external dependencies strictly speaking:
  notification-daemon
  samba4

Removed:
  gnome-volume-manager (replaced by nautilus, etc.)
  nautilus-cd-burner (replaced by brasero)


Details
=======

 + brasero (desktop)
   - mixed feelings in the community and in the release team
   - reactive development team
   - directly conflicts with nautilus-cd-burner feature-wise, so if
     accepted, nautilus-cd-burner has to be deprecated
   - fills a need that has been felt by many users
   - used by default on several distributions already
   => approved
   => nautilus-cd-burner is therefore deprecated

 + DeviceKit-power (external dependency)
   - needed for the new gnome-power-manager
   => approved

 + evolution-mapi (desktop)
   - depends on libmapi, which depends samba4
   - libmapi 0.8.0 will be released in the next few days
   - provides support for exchange 2007 (which evolution-exchange
     doesn't do)
   - some features might not be ready for 2.26 (Password Expiry, Send
     Options, Out-of-Office)
   - possible to choose between evolution-exchange and evolution-mapi at
     runtime
   => approved
      We'll keep evolution-exchange in 2.26 if possible, to avoid
      regressions for people who do not require exchange 2007 support.

 + farsight 2 (external dependency)
   - needed for empathy
   - will make it possible to offer good VoIP support
   => approved

 + gnome-user-share (desktop)
   - no documentation
   - Bastien wants one capplet to cover vino & gnome-user-share
     preferences (would live in gnome-control-center). This is not
     required for 2.26, but would still be nice if possible.
   - hard depends on libnotify, but looks easy to make this dependency
     optional.
   => approved
      Even though this was not a blocker, the release team would like to
      see some effort towards writing documentation.

 + libgda (external dependency)
   - needed for anjuta
   - mixed about libgda vs sqlite: some release team people feel that
     anjuta needs would be satisfied with sqlite which is already an
     external dependency
   - the symbol db plugin could be optional
   - switching anjuta to sqlite probably requires some non-negligible
     effort
   => approved
      It'd be nice to have someone write a small wiki page to help
      people choose between libgda and sqlite.

 + libical (external dependency)
   - needed to remove the fork from evolution-data-server
   - less duplication is good
   => approved

 + libmapi (external dependency)
   - needed for evolution-mapi
   - see evolution-mapi rationale
   => approved

 + libnotify (external dependency)
   - widely used
   - would be nice to have a more active development
   - feature that should live in GTK+ in the future (when dbus can be
     used there)
   => approved
     The release team wants to stress out that it should really not be
     abused (as it tends to be).

 + libproxy (external dependency)
   - needed for libsoup
   => approved

 + libseed (external dependency)
   - one game in gnome-games uses it
   - too early to know how used it will be, and how the community reacts
     from a libseed vs gjs point of view
   - good to see libseed and gjs developers talk about making things
     compatible
   => rejected

 + Mono.Addins (external dependency)
   - needed to remove the version bundled with tomboy
   - less duplication is good
   => approved

 + notification-daemon (external dependency)
   - not really a build-time dependency, so not strictly needed
   - still use libsexy
   - would be nice to have a more active development
   - would be nice to see the new development going on after the
     discussion in December
   - libnotify has API to detect the capabilities of a running
     notification daemon
   => rejected, but because it's orthogonal to our external dependencies
      (it's like apache for gnome-user-share)

 + pulseaudio (external dependency)
   - needed for gnome-volume-control
   - general consensus that it's the way forward, even though it's a
     bumpy road for some users
   => approved

 + samba4 (external dependency)
   - actually not directly needed for evolution-mapi
   => put it in the list of dependencies of our dependencies

 + unique (external dependency)
   - needed for nautilus and other modules
   - feature that should live in GTK+ in the future, but it's nice to
     have it now
   => approved

 + webkit (external dependency)
   - epiphany and yelp won't use it for 2.26
   - evolution is still using gtkhtml
   - devhelp uses it (we used an old branch for 2.24)
   - still not ready for accessibility
   - the release team is happy to see the WebKit/GTK+ people willing to
     release more often, and willing to fix the accessibility issue for
     2.28
   => rejected


 + dropping gnome-volume-manager (from desktop)
   - all useful features are now handled by nautilus and other modules
   => approved

 + moving intltool to an external dependency (instead of platform)
   - not a GNOME-only technology
   - we did such a move for libxml2 in the past
   => approved


Thanks,

Vincent

-- 
Les gens heureux ne sont pas pressés.