Re: Revisiting the Gnome Bindings

[Jonathan Blandford <jrb redhat com>]

Mikael Hallendal <micke imendio com> writes:

> In the long run I would think and hope that if you replaced a part of
> the GNOME desktop and it was written in Python it would eventually
> replace the one already in. But that won't happen after a discussion to
> add Python/PyGTK to the platform.
> 
> This could happen in two ways,
> 
> 1) We decide as a community that Python will be part of the platform and
>     that it's now OK to write software for the desktop release using
>     Python.
> 
> 2) People write enough good software using one language so that we see
>     it worth adding that language as part of the platform.
> 
> If we go with (1) it will definitely make people write more applications
> using Python. If we go with (2) a lot of people will continue struggle
> with C while waiting for a decision. These assumptions are based on my
> own view and will not be true for everyone but if I wanted to make sure
> that my application could be part of GNOME I would write it in C and it
> would take considerable longer time than writing it in Python. (so in
> the end I would waste my hours and the application wouldn't be out as
> fast)...

I completely agree with Mikael.

At several points in the past, I've wanted to write a capplet for the
control-center in python.  I've always grumbled, then written the code
in C, despite it being much slower to write.  It's harder to do a good
job handling errors for the user in C, too.

I would love to see limited use of python in the desktop release for
GNOME 2.10.  I'm not sure we want to see applets or core components
written in python yet, primarily because of the assumed resource hit.
I'd love to be proven that it is feasible, though.  It certainly makes
sense for applications with a limited lifespan, such as those in the
control-center or gnome-utilities.

We'll probably need to get something like bug-buddy going for python
exceptions, too.

Thanks,
-Jonathan