Re: Gratious dependencies added to gnome-core

[Malcolm Tredinnick <malcolm commsecure com au>]

On Wed, Nov 28, 2001 at 12:56:07AM -0500, Alex Larsson wrote:
> On Wed, 28 Nov 2001, Malcolm Tredinnick wrote:
> > On Tue, Nov 27, 2001 at 10:52:52PM -0500, Alex Larsson wrote:
> > > I just added a libwnck-based pager applet to gnome-core. This means that 
> > > gnome-core now depends on libwnck. (It is in the libwnck module in gnome 
> > > cvs.)
> > 
> > Whilst not wishing to question the quality of the libwnck code, is this
> > really a good idea? Until now, gnome-core has depended only on the
> > platform libraries and there was a metric truckload of discussions about
> > what went into that list and the support and stability requirements it
> > entails. So is making gnome-core depend upon a relatively untested
> > library a good idea or not?
> 
> Well. It more or less replaces the gwmh.[ch] in the old deskguide, but is 
> moved outside gnome-core so that some other apps can use it (e.g. 
> procman). I don't know if the gwmh code is any good, but it does not 
> support the new window manager spec, meaning it would have to be rewritten 
> from scratch to be useful to us.

Fair enough.

> This is not a platform library though. It is basically an 
> internals-of-some-apps library that is not supported, and it's API is not 
> stable in the same sense that the platform libraries are.

Which was sort of my concern, but it probably doesn't matter too much
for gnome-core, since the group of developers involved there are clueful
enough to be able to keep up with any small API breakages and it looks
like you are bashing away at the big problems pretty actively this week.

> > (I'm really looking for a sense of how Alex or Havoc feel about the
> > code; if they both come and say it's fine and can be debugged in time
> > for the release, then I am happy ... but I don't get that feeling yet.)
> 
> It's not like it would be easier/faster/less buggy if we reimplement it 
> again inside gnome-core, so if we want a pager/tasklist this is what we 
> have.
> 
> That being said, it is not a large or complicated library, and I see no 
> reasons whatsoever that it would cause any problems.

All reasonable. Thanks for the confirmation.

Malcolm

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