Module Proposal: GNOME Shell

[Owen Taylor <otaylor redhat com>]

[
  I've intentionally kept this proposal short rather than trying to answer
  every possible concern; if you have questions, feel free to ask them
  now or during the module discussion period in May.

  I'll be largely away from my mail for the next few days, so I'll probably
  respond to questions in a batch rather than replying to mails individually. 
]

Purpose: 
 GNOME Shell provides core user interface functions for the GNOME 3 desktop,
 like switching to windows and launching applications. GNOME Shell takes
 advantage of the capabilities of modern graphics hardware and introduces
 innovative user interface concepts to provide a visually attractive and
 easy-to-use experience.

Target: Desktop Release Set

Dependencies:
 Mutter: Will be proposed as a desktop release set module
 GJS: Will be proposed as a desktop release set module
 gobject-introspection: Will be proposed as a desktop release set module
 
 The most controversial dependency is indirect; GJS brings in a dependency
 on the Spidermonkey Javascript engine. This is universally packaged on
 distributions shipping GNOME since it is required by Firefox and 
 Thunderbird, however it doesn't align particularly well with the move
 of GNOME to webkit for embedded web browsers. My general feeling is that
 this is more of a conceptual problem than something that will have
 an actual impact on end users and resolving it isn't the best use of
 developer time at this point.
 
Resource usage:
 tarballs:        http://ftp.gnome.org/pub/GNOME/sources/gnome-shell/
 source control:  git://git.gnome.org/gnome-shell
 bugzilla:        http://bugzilla.gnome.org, gnome-shell product
 
Adoption:
 GNOME Shell packages exist for most major Linux distributions; since
 GNOME Shell has not yet had a stable release, no distribution is shipping
 it by default. At the current time, GNOME Shell is suitable for day-to-day
 use by more adventurous users.

GNOME-ness, community: 
 The design of GNOME Shell was originally developed at the GNOME 
 user-interface hackfest in October 2008; subsequent development has
 occurred within the GNOME community, and GNOME Shell was an
 extensive topic of discussion at GCDS 2009.
 
Other notes:
 A draft of a 2.31 development roadmap can be found at:
 
  http://live.gnome.org/GnomeShell/RoadmapTwoThirtyOne
  
 This outlines major areas where we are planning work over the next 4-5
 months. (Topics are listed roughly in order of importance - performance,
 filling  out the story of how GNOME Shell interacts with applications,
 and accessibility are towards the top of our list, while a working 
 extension ecosystem, while it would be nice to have, is not a 
 blocking issue.)