Unhappy & libgnome(ui) maintainance

[Martin Baulig <martin home-of-linux org>]

Hi guys,

at the moment, I'm feeling quite unhappy about the current situation of
libgnome and libgnomeui. However, I'm no longer maintainer of these modules
and this is my last week of GNOME hacking before I'll leave to learn for
the university. I'm also no longer release coordinator - so basically, I
have no reason to complain.

I don't want make anyone upset with this mail, so I just say that the
"Roswell" release of libgnome, libgnomeui and libgnomecanvas was the last
one under my maintainership.

Last week, I was hacking most of the time on my guile bindings since I
want to finish them before I leave - but I read gnome-2-0-list and
gnome-components-list, just not cvs-commits-list.

As I did the "Roswell" releases, I was a bit in a hurry, so I didn't pay
any special attention on updating the NEWS files, but it was my feeling
that it was quite obvious. So, if I had a bit more time for this release,
the NEWS files would have looked like this:

----[NEWS - from libgnome 1.102.0 "Roswell"]-----

August 11, 2001:
===============

* Released libgnome 1.102.0 "Roswell".

  - a few bug fixes.

  - outstanding API issues: none

----[NEWS - from libgnomecanvas 1.102.0 "Roswell"]-----

August 14, 2001:
===============

* Released libgnomecanvas 1.102.0 "Roswell".

  This is the first library freeze release of libgnomeui.

  Outstanding API issues:

  - GnomeCanvasRichText: this may need some love.

----[NEWS - from libgnomeui 1.102.0 "Roswell"]-----

August 14, 2001:
===============

Released libgnomeui 1.102.0 "Roswell".

Outstanding API issues:

- GnomeAbout:

     Anders Carlsson is currently working on a cool new
     GnomeAbout dialog.

- GnomeEntry, GnomeFileEntry, GnomeIconEntry, GnomePixmapEntry:

     Anders Carlsson to put back the GNOME 1.x versions of
     these files, my new selector widgets will reside in the
     bonobo-extra module until they're maturized enough.

------

I released "Roswell" on August 14th - two weeks after the API freeze -
and it seemed quite obvious to me that today, on August 27th, we're in
a hard freeze except for the API issues listed above.

The last few weeks, I did my best to make GNOME 2.0 as good as at all
possible and I also took the API freeze very serious - for me, having an
API freeze means that nothing but bug fixes goes in unless there is a very,
very good reason and previous discussion.

This also means, that if I still was the maintainer, I'd have reverted all
of George's changes in libgnome and libgnomeui - what he did was absolutely
unacceptable 4 weeks after the API freeze - but who cares, it's not my job
anymore.

I'm just feeling a little bit fooled - as I did my best to freeze these
modules in time and to keep them frozen - and now, I wasn't even away - I
was just hacking on something else for three days and I was even reading my
mail all the time - now I discover that George did things in libgnome(ui)
which I call a major break of the freeze.

It just doesn't work this way.

Remember, about 4 weeks ago - in the week of the freeze - people flamed me
because I didn't want to freeze libgnome(ui) because I felt it was not ready.
But then, I reconsidered and after a discussion with Michael, I realized that
in fact, it was possible that we freeze it in time if we took out the selector
stuff. I had no problem at all with this - in fact, a week later, I was very
happy that we had a frozen libgnome(ui) and that people could start porting
their applications.

And as I did the "Roswell" release, I felt that we now finally have a totally
frozen set of all the base libraries so that we can start porting stuff. This
was a day when I really felt happy about GNOME 2.0 since it was getting stable
and working and everything.

We had 2 open API issues - one was Anders's GnomeAbout - and the other one was
the putting back the GNOME 1.x selectors, but that's really a minor issue which
could be done in one afternoon.

But now, we're suddenly no longer API frozen anymore, what a surprise !

However, I'm just too tired to revert George's stuff just to defend an API freeze
for one more week, it's just not worth, I better spend my remaining time with
doing something more productive.

-- 
Martin Baulig
martin gnome org (private)
baulig suse de (work)