Re: [Gimp-developer] Please migrate to GitHub/CMake

[Chris Moller <moller mollerware com>]

Any piece of code more complex than "Hello, World!" can asymptotically 
approach perfection, but it will never get there.  In a sense, all code 
is always broken, so the questions are whether it's broken enough to 
warrant fixing, and the benefits versus the cost in labour of fixing 
it.  I'd suggest, as a practical matter, that breakage that falls below 
a certain threshold "ain't broke."

I won't presume to assess what "is broke" in GIMP, but I suspect that 
the location of its git repo isn't an issue worth addressing. As to 
CMake, I've no idea what advantages it offers, but GIMP is a complex app 
and I suspect that porting it to CMake would be difficult, 
time-consuming, likely introduce breakage, and the present 
auto*/Makefile mechanism has likely had most of the bugs worked out of 
it over the years.  It may not be ideal in non-*ix environments, but 
GIMP is fundamentally an artefact of the *ix world.

As to your item 2. "There has been a problem to attract new developers 
and contributors," I'd personally be glad to pitch in--I'm a retired IBM 
and Red Hat developer and have been coding for a third of a century--but 
it's not at all obvious what help the present devs need--the "Roadmap" 
on the GIMP site doesn't indicate priorities.  As to 4., the hard-to-use 
bit, the just about universal approach to that complaint involves hiding 
complexity from novices, but that almost always makes things clumsier 
for experts.

Chris

On 05/07/17 10:06, Shlomi Fish wrote:
> Hi Chris,
>
> On Sun, 07 May 2017 09:31:29 -0400
> Chris Moller <moller mollerware com> wrote:
>
> > There's an American expression, "If it ain't broke, don't fix it."
> You can find a rebuttal of this phrase, in a different context here:
> https://szabgab.com/what-does--if-it-aint-broke-dont-fix-it--really-mean.html .
>
> > GIMP development has been working well for a lot of years and I see
> > exactly zero reason to change something that works well.  I don't always
> > agree with minor bits of what the devs decide to do, but THEY'RE doing
> > the work and proposing fundamental changes that add nothing to the
> > coolness of GIMP helps no one.
> I see some problems with GIMP development:
>
> 1. It's been taking too long to release new major versions.
>
> 2. There has been a problem to attract new developers and contributors.
>
> 3. GIMP is lacking many features that are present in similar proprietary
> programs.
>
> 4. Some people still complain on GIMP being hard to use.
>
> 5. A personal pet peeve - https://bugzilla.gnome.org/show_bug.cgi?id=781340
> (minor problem).
>
> ----------
>
> So there's certainly room for improvement and it won't be a good idea not to
> seek out ways to improve it. I'm not saying that moving to github and/or cmake
> is the way to go, but we still should try to improve.
>
> Regards,
>
>         Shlomi Fish
>
> > Chris Moller
> >
> >
> >
> > On 05/07/17 07:14, Marco Ciampa via gimp-developer-list wrote:
> > > On Sun, May 07, 2017 at 01:42:57PM +0300, Alexandre Prokoudine wrote:
> > > > On Sun, May 7, 2017 at 1:40 PM, Ivano Arrighetta wrote:
> > > > > Hello there.
> > > > > My name is Ivano Arrighetta and I'm Italian.
> > > > > I would like to suggest to migrate to GitHub for version control
> > > > No.
> > > >   
> > > > > and to use
> > > > > CMake for creating build projects for Windows and Mac OS, other than
> > > > > Makefiles for *nix.
> > > > CMake is just as painful as autohell.
> > > I confirm what Alexandre is saying, and I'm from Italy too... ;-)
> > >
> > >
> > > --
> > >
> > >
> > > Marco Ciampa
> > >
> > > I know a joke about UDP, but you might not get it.
> > >
> > > ------------------------
> > >
> > >    GNU/Linux User #78271
> > >    FSFE fellow #364
> > >
> > > ------------------------
> > >
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