Re: New modules in 2.14

[Bill Haneman <Bill Haneman Sun COM>]

>  I propose the following: if there's an API/ABI break after the GNOME
> API freeze deadline (which only applies for gnome devel platform
> modules, of course), then desktop library maintainers are strongly
> advised to notify bindings authors by sending an email to the
>  
>
> language-bindings list.  This should be enough, I think

I think it might be better to notify desktop-devel-list too, since other 
desktop modules depend on "non platform" ABI as well.  This sort of 
thing broke some a11y functionality some time back too, and it was very 
late in the game (during the RC phase, IIRC).  Fixing it turned out to 
be nontrivial, so making ABI changes to exported symbols late in the 
release cycle seems like a problem.

At the time, it was suggested that non-platform modules should also obey 
API freeze.  My suggestion, which was a compromise, was to make "desktop 
ABI freeze" come somewhat later than the platform ABI freeze, but to 
have a freeze nonetheless. 

There's a logic in making such a freeze no later than, feature freeze, 
since features and external ABIs are sometimes interdependent.

Bill