Re: [gnome-settings-daemon] datetime: Remove datetime D-Bus mechanism

[Jeremy Bicha <jbicha ubuntu com>]

On 20 January 2012 08:47, Ryan Lortie <desrt desrt ca> wrote:
> hi Bastien,
>
> On Fri, 2012-01-20 at 12:36 +0000, Bastien Nocera wrote:
>> No, the distributions/systems that choose not to use systemd will have
>> to provide a compatible D-Bus service.
>
> This is what I guessed you'd say.
>
>> It can be something "extracted" from systemd, or something new and
>> revived from the old date and time mechanism, but it won't be something
>> we support and maintain in gnome-settings-daemon.
>
>> And I'm glad I have 3000 less lines code to maintain.
>
> I'm just a little bit concerned about how this looks.  I love when we
> can delete code, but we're doing it by disabling a previously-working
> feature for a portion of our users.
>
> If we introduced new optional features that depended on a particular
> systemd functionality in order to operate, it would be one thing.  We do
> that often.  This change is a regression of existing functionality in
> the name of "I don't feel like maintaining it anymore".
>
> I'd also feel a bit better if I thought you had made efforts to get in
> touch with those that would be affected by this regression.  Ubuntu
> isn't shipping GNOME 3.4 g-s-d/g-c-c, this cycle, for example, but for
> the last week I've been trying to convince them that they should.  If I
> had succeeded (which I am now glad I didn't) then this change would have
> been a royal pain, creating a whole lot of new work to fit into an
> already full schedule.
>
> Many of our own end-users will still want to install GNOME 3.4 onto
> their Ubuntu systems (myself included).  I look forward to the mention
> in our release notes about how they can no longer change their time
> because we wanted to delete a bit of code.

I agree with desrt. I've been actively working to package the parts of
GNOME 3.4 that won't make it into the next Ubuntu release so that
people that want the latest GNOME can have easy access to it via a
PPA.

While writing the extra code that Debian and Ubuntu will need may only
take a day or a few days' work for you, it's probably beyond my
abilities. I was going to make a final request before Ubuntu's feature
freeze for g-c-c/g-s-d 3.4 to be reconsidered since it works except
for some minor work needed in lightdm and unity. That work will have
to be done anyway if we even want g-c-c 3.4 to be made available in
the extra PPA.

Dropping support for Debian & Ubuntu doesn't seem a very friendly
move, and it's only going to delay getting GNOME 3.4 into the hands of
your user base.

Jeremy