Re: GNOME 2.0 Platform Alpha Deadline - Sep 26, 2001

[Ian McKellar <yakk eavel com>]

On Tue, Sep 18, 2001 at 03:20:55PM -0500, Bill Gribble wrote:
> I guess I'm not being very clear, sorry. Here's a listing of the
> packages in Debian that depend on libgal being installed.  As far as I
> can tell, it's a good fraction of the major GNOME applications.
> 
(after removing some duplicates)

Stuff primarily developed by Ximian:
> package: ximian-setup-tools
> package: red-carpet
> package: gtkhtml
> package: encompass
> package: evolution
> package: gnumeric

Stuff that I'm guessing depends on GAL via GtkHTML:
> package: pan
> package: python-gnome
> package: balsa
> package: screem
> package: gnomesword
> package: gnucash
> package: gnuvd-gnome

Other:
> package: sodipodi
> package: mrproject
> package: procman
> package: gtranslator

So most of these are either predominantly Ximian projects or are merely
depending on GAL because GtkHTML depends on it.

Lets look at more numbers (because numbers are always easy to twist to one's
argument):
grep-dctrl -F depends -s package libgal /var/lib/dpkg/available|wc -l
     25
grep-dctrl -F depends -s package libgnomeui32 /var/lib/dpkg/available|wc -l
    228
grep-dctrl -F depends -s package libgtk1.2 /var/lib/dpkg/available|wc -l
    584
grep-dctrl -F depends -s package xlibs /var/lib/dpkg/available|wc -l
   1329

So clearly there are a lot of GNOME applications that don't depend on GAL. I
like GAL, I think it provides a lot of great features. Thats why I'm looking
forward to their license being sorted out and them being moved into a
library that has a stable API. Its clear that its in just about everyone's
best interests for GAL and GtkHTML to not freeze fully at least until
Evolution 1.0 is out - right now those libraries are primarilly driven by
that project. When thats done we'll all have some new widgets and code to
help us with out other applications.

Ian

PS: Check this out:
grep-dctrl -F depends -s package libgtk1.2 /var/lib/dpkg/available|wc -l
    584
grep-dctrl -F depends -s package libqt2 /var/lib/dpkg/available|wc -l
    193
Well, we're ahead in the toolkit wars right now.