Re: Modulesets Reorganization

[Paolo Borelli <pborelli katamail com>]

On Wed, 2010-06-02 at 00:37 +0100, Lucas Rocha wrote:
> The long term plan for the GNOME applications that were removed from the
> Desktop, Admin and Dev Tools modulesets is to simply highlight the high-quality
> applications using the GNOME platform through our communication channels
> (release notes, website, etc). There will be no "official" apps anymore and no
> 'Applications' moduleset in the GNOME releases. The goal here is be more open
> with the app developer community around GNOME and to highlight all the nice
> things that can be created using our platform.


Personally I think the idea of giving up on having an Applications
moduleset is a very unfortunate decision for multiple reasons:

 - first and foremost it will drive away fresh forces from gnome: most
of new developers get involved in writing code for applications and
feeling "officially part of gnome" is a determining factor in getting
more involved in desktop-wide hacking, in the community mailing lists,
join the foundation and so on

 - Cross-application hacking will slowly vanish, slowly ruining the
quality and consistency of the gnome desktop. For instance until a few
years back we had ui revisions for all gnome application each cycle
which ensured consistency and quality... I think we should work on
getting this kind of thing back (especially since gnome 3 will bring
some changes to the ui!) instead this decision will make each
application go its own way

 - QA effort will be impacted: I used to run a full jhbuild version of
gnome all the time and I don't anymore and I think I am not the only
one... This is a problem on its own (and something the RT should work
on!), but if "jhbuild build" does not build a full desktop anymore (or
if it takes 2 days to build because it pulls in 6 media players) we are
once again moving in the wrong direction

 - A particular note goes to also giving up on the Dev Tools moduleset:
new developers ask all the time about which tools should they use to
hack on gnome, the dev tools moduleset was starting to become a decent
answer to that (though I certainly wish it provided a more complete
development environment and more tools were added, eg sysprof). Giving
up on creating an official moduleset is a step back since we cannot say
"Want to hack on gnome? Here are the tools of the trade"



I am really sorry to say it, but this feels like the gnome chronic
inability to make decisions: we are not able to pick RhythmBox or
Banshee, we are not able to deal with Zeitgeist being on LaunchPad,
etc... so the only decision we are able to make is to cop out on making
decisions.


Ciao

	Paolo