Re: How do you hack on the bleeding edge of Gnome?

[Stef Walter <stefw gnome org>]

On 04/19/2012 12:55 AM, Federico Mena Quintero wrote:
> So this mail is about:  how do *you* hack on Gnome on an everyday basis?

jhbuild. Which often makes me sad. It's gotten better, but I find that
I'm constantly fixing build problems, and/or waiting for the stack to
compile. It's gotten to the point where I often start a build every few
days, whether I need it or not, fixing build problems along the way, so
that when I actually need to hack on something it's ready.

> Do people get their source trees built only up to the modules they hack
> on, and ignore the rest (been there, done that)?  

Yup :S

> Do people wait until a
> distro carries packages for development versions (too late in the game;
> been there, done that)?  

In the modules I've maintained I'd had tried to only depend on stuff
released in the latest distros. But more recently I haven't been able to
do that anymore due to 1) me splitting related stuff up into multiple
modules, and 2) the feature-based development style of GNOME.

> How would *you* make Gnome score higher on the
> Joel Test?

Probably by having a continuous build which produces installable
development packages based on Alex's Glick 'bundles':

http://blogs.gnome.org/alexl/2011/09/30/rethinking-the-linux-distibution/

Cheers,

Stef