Re: build system alternatives (Was: Using vala in GNOME)

[Johan Dahlin <jdahlin async com br>]

Colin Walters wrote:
> On Tue, 2008-07-01 at 16:02 -0300, Johan Dahlin wrote:
>
> > The contribution barrier for GNOME is way to high as it is today, I'm merely 
> > trying to reduce it by allowing developers from other (as in non-unix) 
> > backgrounds be able to contribute.
>
> Strategically speaking, while I think it makes sense for GNOME to invest
> in the fundamentals (core GTK+ windowing, DBus) of running on
> non-freedesktop.org platforms[1], developer time is better spent pushing
> the free platform as a whole forward.  Competing with
> Qt/Swing/Windows.Forms/XULRunner/AIR (Qt in particular) for this is a
> big project.

Great success for me would be to have people chose GTK/GNOME technologies to 
develop cross-platform applications. I don't really see that as negative 
impact on the development of the GNOME platform, rather the opposite by 
helping it to be even more successful by deploying it on more systems.

There are two different strategies of pursuing our agenda. Either using 
completely free systems or having free programs running on what is non-free 
systems below. Not completely unlike comparing the Top-down or Bottom-up 
kind of designs.

Let's do both, trying all possible ways of making people use our software.

> So in this particular case, our target audience for GTK+ on Windows/OS X
> is experienced developers familiar with the free desktop stack who at
> least somewhat understand autotools, etc.

My interest is mainly the GTK+ part of the stack, which should be 
considerably easier to support. I'm not talking about taking away developer 
time from already busy developers. Just widening the developer base and 
allowing more expertize to contribute to the platform.

Johan