Re: Putting the 'Mono debate' back on the rails

[Vincent Untz <vuntz gnome org>]

Hi Mike,

Le vendredi 21 juillet 2006, à 11:27, Mike Kestner a écrit :
> On Sat, 2006-07-22 at 00:03 +1000, Jeff Waugh wrote:
> 
> >  * Should we include Gtk# in the Bindings suite?
> >   - the release management issues have largely been solved, aside from Gtk#
> >     not being split between Platform and Desktop (stable and unstable) APIs
> >     which is pretty important in terms of ISV/ISD communication and so on
> 
> I have resisted this split, and I think the above statement gets to the
> heart of my issue.  There is this idea that it is not possible to
> guarantee API stability for bindings of Desktop libraries.  We (Gtk#)
> have made no stability exceptions for these APIs to our users.  That may
> seem insane to some.  It may make us jump through some additional hoops
> down the road, if the desktop developers choose to exercise their
> prerogative to break things.  However, it has not been an issue for us
> to this point.
> 
> We bind six libraries that fall in the desktop set currently.  I cannot
> split out three of them because the APIs are included in gnome-sharp.dll
> currently, and to split them out would break API compat for my users.
> Those are libgnomeprint, libgnomeprintui, and libpanelapplet.  The first
> two are unlikely to have API breakage, since they are basically
> deprecated by Gtk 2.10.  libpanelapplet is a very small exposed API for
> us.  If splitting these APIs out is a requirement, we can remove Gtk#
> from consideration now. 
> 
> The remaining three, rsvg, vte, and gtkhtml have not proven problematic.
> The small portion of gtkhtml that we bind has not changed since 3.10.
> We have not updated the version of rsvg or vte since Gtk# 1.0, and have
> had no reports of breakage against newer installed versions.
> 
> We currently have a policy that only Gnome Platform libraries will be
> considered for inclusion going forward.  Since I am already committed to
> maintaining API stability in the existing bindings, and that seems to be
> the crux of the "No non-platform bindings" rule, I still think it should
> be reasonable to allow Gtk# into the bindings release as is.  
> 
> Hopefully that helps explain why I resist when people continue to tell
> me I must split up the binding to remove these "unstable" libraries.
> The resulting split would provide users no additional guarantees, would
> require more work on my part and for packagers and users, and would
> theoretically break deployed applications if upgrading Gtk# started
> removing installed binaries.

I respectfully disagree.

I'm glad to hear that you're trying as hard as possible to provide API
stability for the libraries in the desktop suite. This is really great.
But this is besides the point.

The API in the bindings suite covers the platform API. This has to be
clear to ISD/ISV and we don't want to compromise this message. Please
don't consider Gtk# only, but the platform (with the bindings) as a
whole.

It's not about additional guarantees. It might require more work on your
part (but is it so much more work?), packagers are certainly used to
such splittings and users won't see a difference 99% of the time.

(another solution would be to change the meaning of the bindings suite,
but I do not think it's a good idea)

Vincent, who'd really like to get Gtk# in the bindings suite

-- 
Les gens heureux ne sont pas pressés.