Re: Module Proposal: Zeitgeist

[Owen Taylor <otaylor redhat com>]

On Fri, 2010-04-23 at 16:52 -0400, Curtis Hovey wrote:
> On Thu, 2010-04-22 at 19:01 +0200, Seif Lotfy wrote:
> > Our current development is heavily based on launchpad. 
> > We are discussing the issue and we don't see a problem to have our
> > trunk from launchpad ported to git with every release. However we do
> > want to keep our development branches in bzr+launchpad. So with every
> > branch merge with our launchpad trunk we can sync it with the gnome
> > trunk. The bigger issue will be bugzilla. We will have to tackle both
> > launchpad and bugzilla simultaneously.
> 
> I think Launchpad + BZR and GNOME + git can interoperate fine.
> 
> I think you can:
> * use bzr-git to push your Launchpad trunk to GNOME git
> * setup an import of the git branch and make it trunk
> * Use launchpad for development, translations, and reviews
> * Use bzr-git to commit your approved branches to GNOME git.
> 
> You can request a rescan of GNOME git (takes about 5 minutes) to get the
> changes back to Launchpad.
> 
> If you need assistance, I can help. If I cannot help, I am sure someone
> from the launchpad-code team can explain the workflow.

I think the question is, is this OK for a GNOME module? 

The main point of requiring use of GNOME infrastructure for GNOME
modules, as I see it, is that anybody in the GNOME community can
immediately jump in, start helping out, and start contributing to the
module. And also, that people working on your module can seamlessly move
over to working on other parts of GNOME. It's being part of the GNOME
community.

If the Zeitgeist community is centered around Launchpad and bzr and
wants changes submitted as launchpad branches, but it happens that you
can check it out of GNOME git, that's not being part of the GNOME
community.

(A secondary point is definitely being part of our translation
infrastructure so that the translators can make sure that GNOME is
properly translated into their languages without having to join and
participate in some different translation community.)

As for the "external dependency" question - certainly there are other
components like GStreamer and Clutter that are external dependencies
despite being closely tied in with the GNOME platform. 

However, the external dependency mechanism is really meant to be there
for something that is already out there, that already has a stable
version that we can depend upon and that provides the features we need,
and that has a development community and process that are going to run
independent of GNOME. It's not meant for something that is being
cooperatively developed in tandem with GNOME features.

- Owen