Re: GNOME 1.4 extra apps coordinators

[Ian Peters <itp helixcode com>]

On Sun, Oct 22, 2000 at 03:46:20PM -0500, Dan Mueth wrote:
> 
> I am still for having gnome-xxx-extras packages. I promise not to scream
> and shout if everybody disagrees, but I will try to explain why.

Sounds fair.  ;)

> The main reason is for the user.  Right now the user has a hard time
> finding additional good applications for their system.  The software map
> helps some, but it is somewhat tricky to navigate.  A search feature would
> help here.  Once one does find an application they want, the quality is
> completely random.  The application could be long abandoned, only
> available in certain packages (eg. only tgz), and while I haven't done a
> careful survey, my impression is that there is little translation or
> even documentation of these packages.  Having all of the applications
> seperate means the user must find, download, install, and test each
> application and hope for the best.  Having a single package of tested and
> supported applications would help a lot here.

I think that Jamin and I can commit to helping this problem by getting
the "extra apps" list compiled well before the release, giving the
translation and documentation teams plenty of time to go nuts.

> Now having the extra apps will help, since a certain level of QA will be
> done on these packages before giving them the "stamp of approval" of the
> extra apps coordinators.  Will the extra apps coordinators make sure each
> app is available in tgz, rpm, and deb packages?  This would be very nice,
> but would take some work.  We also would like to have documentation and
> translations for each package.

I would love to have docs and translations for these apps -- I think
it's part of being a good GNOME app.

I don't think that GNOME has ever (consistently) attempted to provide
releases in any format other than source.  Maintainers make a source
release; sometimes it is possible for them to provide a .spec file
that works on one or two RPM-based distros, or a debian/ directory,
but that's a stretch.  It's a very non-trivial problem to make
packages that work on all of the distributions available.

As such, I don't think that we'll be making any attempt at all to make
sure that the extra apps are initially available in any format other
than source.  I hope that distributions and other vendors will take
our advice and put these quality apps in their distributions, but
that's their job, not ours.

[Puts on his Helix Code shirt] I can almost guarantee that the extra
apps, along with the rest of the GNOME 1.4 release, will be almost
immediately available from Helix...

> This leads me to the other group having gnome-xxx-extras packages serves -
> the developers.  If we put these packages in CVS, then everybody can work
> together on them.  Hackers can go in and fix bugs.  Doc writers can go in
> and add docs.  Translators can go in and add translations.  Packagers can
> make debs or RPMS. Et cetera.  While developers have the best intentions,
> experience shows that in many cases they are typically so busy that they
> are slow and unreliable at integrating documentation, translations,
> patches, etc. which people send them by email.  CVS works *much* better in
> my experience.  Overall I think the workload is reduced and the quality is
> improved if these apps reside in GNOME CVS where everybody can work
> together on them.
> 
> If people were strongly against packaging them as gnome-xxx-extras, we
> could solve many of these problem by releasing them individually and (1)
> having the extra apps coordinators do QA and make sure they are packaged
> in various formats, and (2) putting them in GNOME CVS so the doc writers,
> packagers, translators, hackers, etc. can work together on them.

Like I said, I think committing to providing these applications in any
format other than source is a mistake.  However, the rest of your
points are very good; I think we'll find that a large number of the
extra app candidates are already in GNOME CVS, and for those that
aren't, we should make sure that they are accessible to our
translators and documenters, perhaps by offering to let them migrate
to the GNOME CVS repository.

However, I think Jamin and I are willing to commit to this without the
need to assemble gnome-foo-extra packages.  I think our efforts are
better spent on things like improving our software map with a better
search facility, and a way of marking those applications which are
part of the extra apps GNOME 1.4 release.

-- 
Ian Peters
itp helixcode com