Re: GNOME: lack of strategic roadmap

[Martyn Russell <martyn lanedo com>]

On 23/02/10 16:09, Dodji Seketeli wrote:
> Le mar. 23 févr. 2010 à 14:12:47 (+0000), Martyn Russell a écrit:
> > Actually, I think that the Red Hat maintainers of the toolkit had an
> > interest in stability (for ISVs) and that stifled development. As
> > such developing anything in GTK+ takes a lot longer than it should
> > and that's why it is always hard to get into development there or to
> > fix something. This has long been the internal politic of GTK+.
>
> Wasn't it possible to develop the new things in branches to showcase
> your ideas and tell the world about those new features?

Yes and it still is, see the MPX branch, the GSEAL work was also started 
in a branch and many things are done that way.

> Just to make things clear, this is a real question, not an attempt to
> point finger or anything like that.
>
> I am asking because, even in layers like X.org where compatibility is
> key, trying things in branches and showing the world proved to have
> worked quite well.

When talking to some of the core maintainers, they often say they want 
to refactor things internally in GTK+ to make maintaining it easier and 
getting new people into the toolkit easier. Just today on 
#gnome-hackers, I saw someone interested in getting into GTK+ 
development and he said it was really hard. I agree.

Johannes makes a really good point too. At some point you could probably 
say that GTK+ was _THE_ exciting project to work on and a lot of code 
got in that should have had more reviews and perhaps that's why it needs 
cleaning up in places now. GTK+ has also been too exposed to change some 
of these issues (hence the GSEAL work).

--
Regards,
Martyn