Re: fallback mode vs llvmpipe rendering

[Vincent Untz <vuntz gnome org>]

Le lundi 25 juin 2012, à 12:56 +0200, Olav Vitters a écrit :
> On Mon, Jun 25, 2012 at 11:05:43AM +0200, Vincent Untz wrote:
> > But there's an interest for going in other directions, and I don't want
> > to block those motivated people if we don't need gnome-panel anymore for
> > our "official" GNOME releases, which means if we don't need the fallback
> > mode anymore. And now that llvmpipe rendering has been available for a
> > few months, I wonder if we still need (or want) to keep the fallback
> > session.
> 
> What kind of other direction? It is fallback because you need it for
> some hardware.

The other direction would be "more like GNOME 2" :-) Right now, we make
the fallback behave a bit like GNOME Shell (at least visually, and for
various bits of the basic interaction), and there have been requests to
not do that.

> If llvmpipe is good enough (it only works on Fedora atm AFAIK), then we
> don't need fallback mode anymore. FWIW, I'd like to have that llvmpipe
> working on Mageia.

Hrm, I think it's working on more than Fedora. It should be working on
openSUSE Factory, and iirc, I've read that it works on Ubuntu too.

> Some people use fallback mode because it can be made to look like
> GNOME 2. Why not, all the better to them.
> 
> However, if all the compatibility stuff is removed, is having just
> gnome-panel + metacity realistic?
> 
> It seems that more and more stuff moves into gnome-shell (authentication
> dialogs, etc). As soon as the maintenance of gnome-panel + metacity is
> transferred to an "you're on git.gnome.org, can do releases, but not
> actively thought of by the rest".. then we might just be first inviting
> people to contribute, but from then onwards making their lives
> difficult. It makes sense that everyone drops support for fallback
> mode... and IIRC, such support is even in gnome-control-center.

True. On the other hand, I wouldn't say the fallback experience is
awesome today. I'm not sure we even properly test it nowadays.

If we decide to go that way, people could at least focus on rebuilding a
GNOME 2 experience with additional components if they want to do so.
This would be outside of our official product, but they wouldn't need to
rely on our fallback code paths that might not be that great for a real
GNOME 2 experience...

> Wondering: Would you still maintain or look after metacity+gnome-panel
> if there is no fallback mode?

I'm not looking after metacity :-) For gnome-panel, I guess it depends.
If people want to step up and actively develop it, I'll make room for
them. Otherwise, I guess I'll keep it in maintenance mode for some more
time.

Cheers,

Vincent

-- 
Les gens heureux ne sont pas pressés.