Re: GNOME and non-linux platforms (release team please stand up)

[Lennart Poettering <mztabzr 0pointer de>]

On Wed, 22.07.09 12:50, Christian Fredrik Kalager Schaller (uraeus gnome org) wrote:

> A topic that was discussed in the hallways in Gran Canaria is the fact
> that GNOME has gone from not letting non-linux platforms hold back
> development of features (ie. introduction of HAL) to making choices that
> basically means we are abandoning any attempts of allowing GNOME to run
> on non-linux platforms.
> 
> The switch from HAL to udev is maybe the clearest one, but the push
> towards PulseAudio for a lot of things have the same effect, as I think
> Lennart has said multiple times that none of the non-linux systems like
> Solaris or FreeBSD got a sound system capable of supporting
> PulseAudio.

That's not really true. PA has an OSS and a SunAudio backend. It has
also been ported to other systems, including Windows (though that one
isn't up-to-date in the lastest PA versions), and even exotic stuff
like Hurd.

For PA my policy is generally to say that I am happy to merge clean
portability patches, but I don't consider non-Linux systems
release-critical in any way, i.e. I won't delay a release for making
sure PA works on non-Linux systems, and I am happy to break non-Linux
support in the process of adding a new feature somewhere, leaving it
for the folks interested in the other operating systems to fix it
again. Also, I make clear that I write my software focussed on Linux,
and not on any other OS. It might be a good idea to adopt a similar
practice in GNOME, too.

Lennart

-- 
Lennart Poettering                        Red Hat, Inc.
lennart [at] poettering [dot] net
http://0pointer.net/lennart/           GnuPG 0x1A015CC4