Re: Platform for Developer Documentation

[Brian Cameron <Brian Cameron Sun COM>]

Alberto/Shaun:

I agree that there is no reason why the developer docs should not
include good documentation for modules such as PackageKit, PulseAudio,
PolicyKit, and udev (DeviceKit & friends or whatever they are called
this month).

That said, OpenSolaris does not distribute any of these.  How distros
manage packages can be very distro specific, so PackageKit is likely
not a good fit for everyone.  On OpenSolaris, PolicyKit has never been
adopted due to the fact that OpenSolaris uses RBAC which provides (or
can provide) similar functionality.  udev is currently very Linux
specific.  I am a bit on the fence about PulseAudio - perhaps it may be
integrated into OpenSolaris at some point, though it seems far more
useful & interesting when using Linux-specific ALSA.

I do recognize that most people who distribute GNOME ship with these
modules, so I am all for delivering good documentation for them.

However, I do think more energy should be focused on the truly
cross-platform interfaces that everybody uses.  At the very least, the
documentation should avoid making assumptions about these sorts of
interfaces being used by everyone.  Especially when information about
these interfaces are mentioned in the documentation for truly cross-
platform interfaces.  For example, if the docs for a desktop
application like totem or nautilus needs to discuss udev of PolicyKit,
it should be made clear that not everybody uses these and that other
mechanisms may need to be used on some distros.

Brian


On 03/ 8/10 09:54 AM, Alberto Ruiz wrote:
> 2010/3/8 Josselin Mouette<joss debian org>:
> > Le dimanche 07 mars 2010 à 15:16 -0600, Shaun McCance a écrit :
> > > * PackageKit
> >
> > I don’t think we should consider PackageKit as a core development
> > interface, but rather as an optional service. It doesn’t integrate
> > properly with all distributions, and not all user setups make it useful,
> > especially the largest installations.
>
> Release often, release early. The only way to improve support is to
> embrace it and push its adoption and get people to file bugs.
>
> > > * PulseAudio
> >
> > Maybe it’s (still) a little too early to consider it? Support for a wide
> > range of hardware is still very poor as of kernel 2.6.32.
>
> PackageKit and PulseAudio are two projects that are pretty well
> aligned with the GNOME platform in terms of API technology and goals,
> they solve hard problems to solve, they don't have any real contenders
> (yes they have problems, but if we wait until they are perfect, we
> will never have a platform).
>
> So my take on this is, embrace those, help downstream to embrace them,
> but let's not hold back or we will end up with a half arsed platform
> that tries to solve everyone's problems and will end up solving no
> one's.
>
> > Furthermore, if you want to consider hardware support, maybe you can
> > talk about GUdev? It’s still Linux-specific, but currently it is the way
> > to go.
> >
> > --
> >   .''`.      Josselin Mouette
> > : :' :
> > `. `'   “I recommend you to learn English in hope that you in
> >   `-     future understand things”  -- Jörg Schilling
> >
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