Re: no external panels for gnome-control-center [was Re: GNOME Feature Proposal: Backup]

[Bastien Nocera <hadess hadess net>]

On Wed, 2011-05-11 at 11:02 +1000, Danielle Madeley wrote:
> On Wed, 2011-05-11 at 01:27 +0100, Bastien Nocera wrote:
> 
> > > #1 -- was this announced/proposed to desktop-devel-list?
> > 
> > No, because it was only made for one particular module
> > (gnome-bluetooth), and by me. The reason we had an external API was so
> > that gnome-bluetooth code happen in time for 3.0. And we've reverting it
> > to 3.2.
> 
> Empathy has some control-center shell integration as well for its
> accounts configuration. Or perhaps it's an old version of the API. It
> was primarily done for Meego Netbook.

That will hopefully be superseded by the Web Accounts panel David is
working on.

> Although I endorse design of the core components, I don't think it has
> to require the component to exist in gnome-cc. Furthermore, this seems
> like a fairly arbitrary limitation. Both major non-free desktops permit
> applications to install control-center.

That's because Apple and Microsoft probably wouldn't be very receptive
to adding functionality they don't have control over to the
control-center.

The control-center is still open source, and you can revert the patch
that will make the library private, or, better, you can patch support
for your functionality in the system settings and ask for integration
upstream.

Leaving the door open to the developer community to add new tabs gets us
in the same tough spot as during the GNOME 2.x days. You end up with an
unwieldy number of panels, and very little thought it what should go
where.