Re: Stable, long term support releases for gtk+

[Emmanuele Bassi <ebassi gmail com>]

just as an addendum:

it seems that GLib 2.32 is the version used by Ubuntu and Debian, so
if we go for an LTS cycle for GLib as well as GTK+, the glib-2-32
branch would be the one used as the baseline.

ciao,
 Emmanuele.

On 3 January 2013 14:26, Emmanuele Bassi <ebassi gmail com> wrote:
> hi all;
>
> gtk has a policy of only releasing from current-stable and master;
> lack of resources, uncertainty on the actual usage, and
> unpredictability of some release policies have mostly prevented the
> creation of "long term support" branches.
>
> distributors have historically been in charge of taking existing
> releases and adding patches to backport fixes from the current-stable
> branch (or even from master); the distributor-list mailing list has
> been created to allow some sort of awareness for patches, to avoid
> per-distribution silos.
>
> this has been raised a bunch of times on IRC and mailing lists, and
> the end result of the discussions has always been: "somebody should
> show up and do the work".
>
> recently, I wrote a strawman[0] for Clutter 2.0 to detail a possible
> policy for LTS releases from the get go, instead of ex post facto.
>
> I think it would be good to have the same policy for GTK+ and maybe
> GLib. this means:
>
>   • identifying the current branch of GTK+ 3.x being used by "stable"
> distributions (Ubuntu LTS, OpenSuse, RHEL, Debian stable);
>   • finding a maintainer in charge of getting the patches from
> distributors and maintainers, integrating them, and spinning releases.
>
> the commonly used release of GTK+ 3.x seems to be 3.4, at least for
> Debian and Ubuntu.
>
> as for a volunteer for the latter point, I nominate myself - I've been
> releasing Clutter for the past 6 years, and given the patches flow, I
> can devote a reasonable slice of time to do this at least until the
> next LTS cycle.
>
> thoughts?
>
> ciao,
>  Emmanuele.
>
> [0] https://live.gnome.org/Clutter/Strawman/LongTermSupport
>
> --
> W: http://www.emmanuelebassi.name
> B: http://blogs.gnome.org/ebassi/



-- 
W: http://www.emmanuelebassi.name
B: http://blogs.gnome.org/ebassi/