Re: [gnome-love] Another Intro and question

[Chema Celorio <chema ximian com>]

michaeld senet com au wrote:
...
> So I'd like to learn how to get involved and maybe obtain that mythical status
> of GNOME hacker one day :-)

sounds great !

> Now for my first question...  I really like the packaging that Ximian do with
> GNOME and that's my preferred desktop.  How easy is it to run a parallel stream
> of components built from CVS alongside the rock-solid-stable Ximian RPMs? 

I haven't found any problems at all. Some people like installing the CVS
stuff
in a different location but i think it is not worth the pain. I get
everything
from RPM build by Ximian and install from source whatever i am working
on. 

> Say
> for example I'd like to fix some of the problems with evolution which really
> annoy me.  Can I just grab evolution from CVS, start hacking and building on top
> of Ximian GNOME 1.4?  Or do I need to install the latest and greatest unstable
> gdk, gtk, bonobo, gconf, gnome print etc to work on evolution? 

There is an evolution snapshots channel in redcarpet so you can get all
the 
libraries from there. But i strongly recommend not starting with
something like
evolution. I suggests starting with something a lot smaller and not so
bleeding
edge.

> You can replace
> evolution with gnome-games, or gnome-core, or indeed anything else, I guess what

Other packages do not requiere the latest and greatest libraries.

> I'm asking is do I need to go to a completely unstable, everything built from
> CVS HEAD, so that I can do some hacking?

What i do is :
1. get everything from RPMS
2. get the code for the libraries I use so that i can browse them,
   without installing them. gtk+ glib gnome-print gal etc..
3. get the code that i am going to work on and install that, if i need
   to use the program and it is unstable i just go back to the latest
   tarball (but almost never do).


love,
Chema