Re: Next stop Utopia, full steam ahead?

[David Zeuthen <david fubar dk>]

On Mon, 2004-06-07 at 22:48, Robert Love wrote:
> > 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?
> 
> Bring it on and I will share the utopia.
> 
> I think we can commit to some sort of API compatibility.  This might
> mean:
> 
> 	* We need to talk to David ASAP
> 	* D-BUS might need some more time to stabilize in its current
> 	  "I know I am unstable" state.
> 
> But maybe 19 July is too early for David.
> 

If it only means creating and maintaining a 'stable' branch of HAL for
the duration of the GNOME 2.8 series, sure, no problem, I can commit to
that. The only interesting things we could export in that stable branch
at that point though would be storage and network devices and maybe USB
printers (Joe?), these seem to be pretty stable and useful today. One
thing I don't want to do this early is to start freezing API/ABI in HAL.
It's simply too early to do that.

But the apps and libraries would still need #ifdef stuff whether to use
HAL or not since Linux 2.6+udev+HAL might not be available everywhere
where GNOME runs. The benefit IMHO would offset this cost though, but I
guess I'm biased. Now, whether modules in the desktop have time to
properly integrate with HAL for GNOME 2.8 is another discussion ;-)

Cheers,
David