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

[Liam R E Quin <liam holoweb net>]

First, to all -

Please remember that English is not the first language of everyone on
this list, and people come from a wide range of cultures. I don't think
Alexandre meant to be dismissive or rude with his "No" (and I think
Carol's comment was meant ironically although I'm not certain).

GIMP uses git but not github; GIMP uses Make and the automake tools and
not CMake. A project that's less widely used can more easily switch
infrastructure.

When cmake goes wrong it's even harder to diagnose and fix than
automake (as others have pointed out already) and I doubt there'd be
enough of an advantage in moving to it to justify the one-time cost to
the large numbers of people who package GIMP for redistribution, have
automated build systems, port GIMP to Windows and other platforms, and
so on. In any case the GIMP team is made of volunteers and we don't
have people saying "I've been around for several years and I'll be
around for several more years and I know CMake really well and am
familiar with supporting it on OpenSolaris and FreeBSD and GNU/Debian
Linux™ and Centos and OS X and Microsoft Windows in several versions
and platforms... and I'd like to do the work of switching, and I'll
spend at least a day every week on it."

More inline...

On Sun, 2017-05-07 at 17:37 +0300, Alexandre Prokoudine wrote:
> On Sun, May 7, 2017 at 5:06 PM, Shlomi Fish wrote:
>
> > I see some problems with GIMP development:
> >
> > 1. It's been taking too long to release new major versions.

GIMP's internals have been undergoing a very major rewrite.

But I think once the new architecture is released it'll be a lot easier
for developers to participate, because the interaction between
components is becoming explicit (a node-based graph).

> > [...]

> > 3. GIMP is lacking many features that are present in similar
> > proprietary programs.

If the feature sets are very different then the programs are not
similar :-)
> > 4. Some people still complain on GIMP being hard to use.
We are working on silencing them but we ran out of anthr... er... lookm
have you ever been to a graphics design class at a university and asked
people whether the proprietary tools that are most widely taught are
easy to use? Hint: they aren't. They're harder if anything.

Some of that is because professional tools with a lot of features have
to be learned, and people do training courses for them.

Some of it, yes, includes areas where GIMP's UI can be improved, which
is still very much a work in progress but has come a long way. With the
next major release "single window mode" will be the default, which will
help a lot of people even if we know it's not perfect.

> > 5. A personal pet peeve - https://bugzilla.gnome.org/show_bug.cgi?i
> > d=781340
> > (minor problem).
I build GIMP from git on my Mageia cauldron system. Yes, there are some
 issues (I have to build gegl without video capture support for
example, because there's no video device on my system since I don't
have a camera) but if you have problems I'm happy to try & help.

Liam [ankh]



-- 
Liam R E Quin <liam holoweb net>