Re: [Evolution] Evolution release and major regressions, a longtime user's thoughts

[Andrew Montalenti <ajm pixelmonkey org>]

Art,

On Wed, 2009-04-08 at 13:11 -0400, Art Alexion wrote:
> And while I agree that the developers should take stock of whether they
> envision themselves as working on a widely deployed production
> application, and release accordingly, I think much of the blame may like
> with the Ubuntu packagers, or those who decide upon which version to
> include.  Outside of my work exchange account, I primarily use Kubuntu.
> The Intrepid release prematurely included the not ready for anyone to
> use KDE 4.  I have been a happy user of Ubuntu since Warty 3.10.  It
> seems those that decide which packages are ready to include lost their
> way with Intrepid 8.10.

Though I agree that the Ubuntu maintainers probably should have done
more testing of Evolution in order to declare it a show-stopper, the
problem is that Ubuntu considers the GNOME stable release to be a
baseline.  Ubuntu rarely (perhaps never) includes a mix of stable GNOME
software at version N and some GNOME software at N-1.  Occasionally,
Ubuntu will include GNOME software at version N and some pieces at N+1
that didn't make the cut for GNOME but are stable enough for general
use.

If, as a release process thing, the evo team had ensured 2.22 worked
with the latest GNOME libraries, and released it as stable, while
maintaining a separate branch (2.24_experimental or somesuch) with the
new backend, that would have been a better practice.  It would have
caused users less pain.  And most likely, in that case, Ubuntu would
have stuck with the version that was released with GNOME at large.
Users who were curious about the new features in evolution (for example,
me) would have tried out 2.24_experiemntal to contribute bug reports,
etc.  But then we could have reverted to 2.22 when we realized that it
wasn't good enough for prime time.

I'm still considering doing a manual revert to 2.22, although at this
point it'll probably be a bit painful to do so.

Andrew