Re: Modulesets Reorganization

[Vincent Untz <vuntz gnome org>]

Hey,

Le mardi 01 juin 2010, à 19:11 -0500, Shaun McCance a écrit :
> On Wed, 2010-06-02 at 00:37 +0100, Lucas Rocha wrote:
> > Hi all,
> > 
> > The release team would like to propose some important changes in the way we
> > organize our modulesets. GNOME releases are currently organized into the
> > following modulesets: Desktop, Platform, Bindings, Mobile, Admin, and Dev
> > Tools. This model has served us well and has actually evolved through time - we
> > didn't have the Admin and Dev Tools modulesets initially. However, we feel that
> > this organization is reaching its limits, and we have explored several
> > potential changes.
> 
> 1) Do you have a list of what the release team would like
> to see in the actual Desktop release? There are obvious
> ins and outs, but there's a lot of gray area.

We've been working on that, but indeed, there's a gray area and I think
help will be welcome there. I hope we'll be able to refresh a bit the
list we have and send it here for review soon.

> 2) Will the Applications be something official that you
> have to nominate modules for and follow certain rules
> like our release procedures? A big part of what makes
> applications in the desktop so great is that they work
> with our translation, documentation, and other teams
> within our schedule.

At first, yes, it will be this way. It's the way we've been working for
years, so it's easier to do the first step with a process we know. That
being said, one rule that, imho, we should remove is that the
application is hosted on the GNOME infrastructure -- that's certainly a
challenge, especially for translations. But we can't expect to host the
whole world in our infrastructure :-)

It's important to note that while we want more applications to feel part
of GNOME, we also want to encourage them to follow our best practices
for the reasons you point out. One idea we've been playing with is some
rating for applications, that would be based on how the app respect
those best practices.

> 3) How strongly will we recommend various applications
> to our distributors?

My first reaction to your question is that distributors already choose
whatever they want. It's true that our recommendation can make a
difference in their decision, though. The way we'll recommend apps is by
promoting them, and we'll promote the ones that are good. So they'll
likely be picked by distributors because they're good. (I might be naive
there, but I'm also a distributor -- sure, I can be a naive distributor
;-))

That being said, can you give an example of where this would be an issue
today? The classic one is banshee vs rhythmbox. Or now shotwell vs
f-spot vs gthumb. And we don't recommend anything there.

> Please understand that this has a HUGE impact on how we
> design and write the GNOME 3 help. We want to be able to
> point to e.g. gucharmap in a topic on entering special
> characters. Mallard gives us the flexibility to do this
> even with disparate module sets, but the more ifs and
> maybes we have to deal with, the harder it is to plan.

I think the example you give might actually give us an answer: if you
want to be able to point to gucharmap in the help, then it's an
indication that gucharmap might be a good candidate for Desktop.

Vincent

-- 
Les gens heureux ne sont pas pressés.