Re: GNOME Feature Proposal: Backup

[Michael Terry <mike mterry name>]

On 12 May 2011 17:05, Allan Day <allanpday gmail com> wrote:
> I presume you'd be happy for Deja Dup to become a GNOME Control Center
> panel?

Depends on what you mean.  I'm happy for Deja Dup to be shown as a
panel in the control center.  But it sounds like you're asking about
actually putting it in the control center git tree?  I guess I don't
see the point.

 * I'd like to continue to support GTK-but-not-GNOME platforms (why
not?) even if only as second-class citizens.  So I'll probably add a
preference dialog that simply wraps the deja-dup control panel for
such cases.  Having the panel be out-of-trunk makes that unnecessarily
hard.

 * I assume the rest of deja-dup would be a separate module, so now it
would be split across modules, losing the ability to share
translations or logic.  I'd have to write a library to share some of
the logic bits.  So that would be more work.

 * The only reason to be in tree that I can see is that g-c-c plans to
drop the API for panels?  But that is a separate thread.

> If Deja Dup is accepted, we'll need to work together and GNOME
> contributors (developers, designers, bug reporters and triagers,
> translators, documentors, etc) will want to contribute to Deja Dup. How
> will they do that?

My intent is to achieve high levels of collaboration.  I have lots of
ideas about how the GNOME community and LP projects can have tighter
integration.  I can defend why LP works for me, but that's not
entirely the point here I feel.

It could be so easy to collaborate!  We could mirror bzr trunk in git,
grant permissions to bzr trunk to an automatically sync'd group on LP,
grant permissions to the translation web UI+trunk to the GNOME
translation team.  I could move my mailing list.  I like to think the
project already works well with GNOME designers (you and I have done a
review before).  Etc.

So the big question to GNOME is how much do ya'll want to avoid the
extra step of such collaboration for Features you consider part of
your core?  Is that a hard-blocker?  Who gets to decide if it is?

I'm theoretically open to moving infrastructure, pending a weighing of
benefits.  But I'm also curious if GNOME is even theoretically open to
me not moving.

> See my other message on the branding question - this isn't necessarily a
> problem. I'm just interested to hear your thoughts on how Deja Dup will
> be branding itself as a standalone application.

I had envisioned the same way as a non-standalone app.  It would
appear as "Backup" to the user.  Either as a standalone preference
dialog or control center panel.  But I've been thinking it needs to
show its brand name at least once (I currently show it in the welcome
screen).  That way users know what they are getting.

Now if your question is really about what that brand is ("GNOME
Backup" vs "Deja Dup") that's a different issue that I'm just now
guessing you meant?

I don't feel strongly on the name presented to users.  I'm open to
feedback here.  It could maybe even be presented differently if
deja-dup is a standalone app vs a panel?

-mt