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

[Bastien Nocera <hadess hadess net>]

On Wed, 2012-04-18 at 17:55 -0500, Federico Mena Quintero wrote:
> I've been having a terrible time trying to get something tested on top
> of Gnome 3.4, all because I can't get 3.4 built from jhbuild.  I'm too
> old to build from tarballs, and my distro doesn't carry 3.4 yet.
> 
> I wonder how people who hack on "core Gnome" do it on a day to day
> basis.
> 
> Here are the results of a little poll/brainstorm on Twitter:
> https://live.gnome.org/BuildMeHarder
<snip>
> So this mail is about:  how do *you* hack on Gnome on an everyday basis?
> Do people get their source trees built only up to the modules they hack
> on, and ignore the rest (been there, done that)?  Do people wait until a
> distro carries packages for development versions (too late in the game;
> been there, done that)?  How would *you* make Gnome score higher on the
> Joel Test?

I build the minimum stack that isn't shipped by my distribution. That
means that I use released development versions of almost everything but
the component I'm working on.

This also means I can compare my experience with other people running
the packages, rather than compare versions of every component in the
whole stack.

> (Side thoughts:  how many people have *actually* tested a full 3.4
> install?)

I did, mostly through my distribution. Building the whole desktop and
dependencies to test one program would drive me up the wall.