GNOME Shell and GNOME-2.28

[Owen Taylor <otaylor redhat com>]

GNOME Shell Goal for 2.28
=========================
A desktop that reflects the basic ideas of GNOME Shell that is
compelling to use on a day-to-day basis as the primary desktop.

gnome-shell-2.28 should be in a state where distributions shipping
GNOME 2.28 can include GNOME Shell as well.

Interaction with the GNOME Release
==================================
Proposing gnome-shell as an official module for GNOME-2.28 doesn't
seem feasible at this point: there are two many unknowns, too fast
a pace of development, and too many unstable dependencies. But at
the same time, we want the GNOME-2.28 release to be a point where
people can preview what's coming in GNOME-3.0 and give us feedback.

That means doing a release of GNOME Shell that is tightly coupled
to the GNOME release deadlines, that we release in a form compatible
with the GNOME-2.28 module set, and that we maintain as a "stable"
release sufficiently past the 2.28 release so that people can
run it, and that distributions can package it.

(That is, we don't want to do a fly-by release where two weeks
later we are saying "that's old and broken, jhbuild the latest
code")

Tasks
=====
UI Design: We need to get solid non-placeholder user interface
  designs for application and document navigation, task switching,
  and gadgets in a sidebar or otherwise. Consideration should
  also be given to how the shell interacts with notifications
  and notification icons.
  
  Then we need to implement the designs.
  
Performance: gnome-shell needs to perform well enough that it
  will be usable for a wide range of people. Roughly speaking,
  this means that it needs to be competitive with Compiz in
  it's graphical demands and resource utilization.
  
  This will require work with X to determine what cards and drivers
  it can run on reasonably; to indentify bugs and performance
  problems, and get them fixed.
  
Dependencies: We need to make sure that all the dependencies
  (gobject-introspection, gir-repository, gjs, clutter, mutter)
  are packagable, are sufficiently stable that a distribution
  can ship them with GNOME-2.28. Where appropriate, modules
  should be proposed as GNOME-2.28 desktop modules or external
  dependencies.
  
Localization: gnome-shell should support translation of all
  user-visible strings. 
  
Integration: gnome-shell should be installable, packagable,
  it should be easy for the user to switch to gnome-shell,
  try it out, and if necessary switch it back. It should integrate
  properly with gnome-session.
  
Accessibility: Full accessibility support is *not* a goal for
  the 2.28 version of gnome-shell, however, we need to make sure 
  that things are on track to get it there for 2.30/3.0. This
  will require review of accessibility support being developed
  for Clutter.
  
By GUADEC?
==========
What's our sub-goal for GUADEC? (about half-way between now and
2.28.) At GUADEC, I want to aggressively push GNOME developers 
to switch, so we need to get enough of the above done so that
people have no excuses.

Timeline
========
A few select dates from http://live.gnome.org/TwoPointTwentyseven/

 May 11:   NOW
 May 18:   New module proposal deadline
 Jul 3-11: GUADEC
 Jul 27:   Feature freeze
 Aug 12:   First Beta
 Sep  9:   Release candidate
 Sep 23:   Final release

So, four months. Not a lot of time.