Re: New modules in 2.14

[Johan Dahlin <johan gnome org>]

> Well, no library in the desktop can be relied upon to remain API or
> ABI stable; that's the reason they are in the desktop.  The difference
> with this lib, _if_ I remember correctly, is that those other libs in
> the desktop were meant to be used by whoever wanted to use them,
> whereas libmetacity-private was expected to not be used by anything
> other than control-center (with the implication that if we make any
> changes that breaks anything other than the control center, we just
> don't care and won't consider it a bug).

Is it not similar to wnck, which mostly the panel uses?

It's fine to break applications and bindings, as long as they're aware of 
it. The only difference between control-center and say gazpacho is that
control-center is included in the desktop while gazpacho isn't.

To me the name metacity-private is just another way of saying
it's an unstable library and don't complain to us if we break your
application.

> > Of course, Elijah would have a better idea
> > of this. Perhaps the solution is to create a libmetacity that use
> > functions people may need to use, and a libmetacity-private to do
> > whatever it is doing now.

> Actually, it'd be Havoc who'd probably need to comment here, as I'm
> not certain I'm recalling correctly, I've never touched that lib, and
> he'd need to be the one to say whether he's willing to support wider
> use of it.

There are already other applications using it, eg monodevelop.
Of course, both gazpacho and monodevelop would prefer a window manager 
neutral way of drawing borders. Perhaps something for a future revision
of the ewmh specs.

Johan