GNOME 2.0 Developer Platform Beta: "Everyone's Excited and Confused"

[Jeff Waugh <jdub perkypants org>]

GNOME 2.0 Developer Platform Beta
=================================

The API frozen Developer Platform Beta, "Everyone's Excited and Confused",
is ready for your porting pleasure! It is available for immediate download:

  ftp://ftp.gnome.org/pub/GNOME/pre-gnome2/releases/gnome-2.0-lib-beta1/

This release marks the first API frozen release of the GNOME 2.0 Developer
Platform, and is 100% parallel installable with the latest GNOME 1.x
platform libraries.

The GNOME 2.0 Developer Platform provides many technical advantages over
GNOME 1.x, including full multi-lingual text support, high-quality
anti-aliased text, accessibility support, substantial API and usability
improvements to the libraries and widgets, and greater ease of development.

Please file bug reports for this release at http://bugzilla.gnome.org/


Porting Your GNOME Applications
===============================

Now is the perfect time to begin porting your applications to the new GNOME
platform libraries! The GNOME 2.0 Porting Guide offers tips and guidelines
for porting applications to the new platform, and API docs exist for many of
the platform libraries.

GNOME 2.0 Porting Guide: http://developer.gnome.org/dotplan/porting/

GNOME 2.0 API Documentation: http://developer.gnome.org/doc/API/

  (Please note that whilst most modules contain API docs already, many are
  not yet available on the main API documentation web page. Please check the
  tarballs for API docs, and bug maintainers with inadequate documentation.)


GNOME 2.0 Desktop Release Progress
==================================

Often the best way to solve a porting problem is to check out someone else's
code; the best way to do that right now is to keep up with the porting
progress on the GNOME 2.0 Desktop modules.

The dot.plan website includes a building guide for the very in-development
GNOME 2.0 Desktop, the aforementioned porting guide, and a list of modules
and their status, amongst other things (like pretty screenshots).

  http://developer.gnome.org/dotplan/

Many of the core GNOME developers are 'eating their own dogfood' by using
the GNOME 2.0 Desktop day-to-day.

  Keep in mind that right now, building the GNOME 2.0 Desktop from CVS is
  NOT for the faint-hearted! However, if your idea of support is prompt
  integration of your patches, please consider testing, using and
  contributing to it.

George Lebl's vicious-build-scripts are the fastest way to build the current
CVS HEAD code, and a guide to using them is also available on dot.plan:

  http://developer.gnome.org/dotplan/notes/


Thank you to the many hackers who have already begun porting, testing and
contributing to GNOME 2.0...

Happy porting!

- The GNOME 2.0 Release Team

--
   "When there's public debate and mass hysteria, that's when the patches
                         roll in." - Michael Meeks