Re: Next stop Utopia, full steam ahead?

[Jeff Waugh <jdub perkypants org>]

<quote who="Robert Love">

> For gnome-volume-manager to go in, I assume that we need to require the
> components in the Utopia stack - specifically HAL, which then requires
> D-BUS.

udev?

>         * Code freeze is when? :-)

API, ABI, Feature and Module freeze (also important) is on July 19th.

Hard code freeze is on August 30th. Note that the hard code freeze is on our
release candidate date tarballs due date. We'd expect some winding down
before then. ;-)

>         * Introducing D-BUS and HAL dependencies onto GNOME.
>         
>         * HAL is written to be architecture-independent where applicable
>         and easily sysdep-separated where not.  Currently, however, it
>         only supports Linux.  Porting it to other systems would not be
>         very hard, but would require that the system make available
>         certain enumerations relating to devices.

I'm sure that if we have some certainty that the Utopia stack is on the
cards, the ports will follow quickly. FreeBSD and Solaris will get their
feet wet first. ;-)

>         * I don't see D-BUS code freezing anytime soon, but maybe the D-
>         BUS developers could shock me.

That's probably the biggest question mark, I guess.

>         * While g-v-m might be ready, none of the gnome-vfs etc. patches
>         are in the respective trees yet
>         
>         * Jeff's hard dependency question.  Some things (f.e. g-v-m)
>         absolutely require HAL.  Others (f.e. gnome-vfs) can be compile-
>         time options.  Run-time fall back is not particularly pretty.
>         
>         * How is the line between GNOME and freedesktop.org platform
>         managed?  HAL and D-BUS are freedesktop.org components.  Are
>         they merely requirements for GNOME or do we make them part of
>         the Desktop release proper?

That's an interesting one. Without a 'freedesktop.org Platform' release in
the picture, it makes it slightly harder. That said, we could call Utopia
components the 'freedesktop.org Utopia' release, and say we depend on that.

It would not make a lot of sense for us to commit to an external dependency
within our Platform modules without knowing that there'd be some API/ABI
guarantees - would that be remotely feasible for you guys in GNOME 2.8 time?

(Note that you might not need to be API/ABI stable between GNOME releases,
because our use of your modules should not be API/ABI exposed -> is that
right?)

Thanks,

- Jeff

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GVADEC 2004: Kristiansand, Norway                    http://2004.guadec.org/
 
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