[gnome-flashback] Gnome Flashback

[Alberts Muktupāvels <alberts muktupavels gmail com>]

Hi,

I will start with answering on previous e-mails...

I asked that some unfinished / unreviewed commits that got pushed to
master were reverted.
That never happened, except for the few I reverted myself.

You did not ask me to revert anything, but just said that I have created big mess in master, that you will need revert everything committed by me and that you are going to remove my commit privileges. Am I wrong? If so then please give me link to e-mail where you asked me such thing.

Also you reverted commits that should not be reverted. You clearly stated that flashback 3.8 should work with other 3.8 gnome parts. So we should care only about that our session works with gdm 3.8. So reverting maybe was needed only for added compiz and mutter sessions.

The last question from you that I'm aware of showed a complete lack of
understanding what each branch is targeted at - although I had
documented that _repeatedly_. Which shows me that you don't even read
the mails that I write.

I have read probably all e-mails in this mailing list. I still think that all in master can be targeted to 3.8 version. That is why I asked. I am not going to spend my time to commit same changes to different branches when that is not needed. Your released version 3.8 from my view is just 3.6.3 version. As now I am working with 3.10 I just wanted to know if you will want to release 3.8.1 from master or not.

I think that touches the base of our problem.
I had asked for help in rescuing lost features from
gnome-settings-daemon et al, and figuring out how to ship them as part
of Gnome Flashback. Alberts is the one actually actively coding, but
only interested in modernizing the code base, getting rid of deprecated
function usage, and killing GConf.

You asked, but why you are not trying to do it yourself?

Yes, I am interested in these things. Why? Because I want use this session today, tomorrow, after some month, after some years. I don't like unity nor gnome-shell. So I am thinking about future. If we are not going to fix deprecated things now what will happen when we will want to make this session to work with gtk 4? Porting or rewriting all things than will be a lot harder than it is now.

To be blunt: At the moment, I don't see us (the subproject) surviving
the move to a (still hypothetical) Gtk+ 4, where things like a
deprecated GtkHBox would actually disappear on us. So this kind of work
is just not my priority, and we don't have the strength to pull of a
libpanel-applet ABI bump, much less just for the sake of "just" removing
a GConf dependency.

Exactly! We won't survive if we are not going to do something about it. Why you so match care about not bumping ABI version? If it where done few month ago there would be plenty of time to adapt these changes. Of course this could make un-maintained applets to not work with new version. But if it is good applet we can add it in our source tree.

Alberts: of course I cannot tell you what to work on. I agree with
Dmitry, that it would be best if you continue your work upstream, but in
a feature branch. Create a "feature/remove-foo" or
"feature/modernize-bar" branch, work there, and ask us to review it,
when it's ready. And please try for good commit messages, including
references to bugzilla or relevant mailing list threads.

Why would I create these branches which may never get merged? So I create branch x, than create branch y and branch z. All branches I will need to create from master. If one will get merged than I will need update all other branches. Extra work will be needed.

So, what will we do with master ? ATM I lean towards skipping 3.10
entirely, switching everybody to building in a 3.11 environment ASAP,
and trying to hit the 3.12 release.

Why skip 3.10? Is there any real reason for it? gnome-panel is no longer official part of gnome. We should focus on fixing and improving it not just to catch up gnome release cycle. What is point to release gnome-panel 3.12 if it is basically still 3.6.2 if my changes are going to be reverted?

Metacity. Are we going to use gtk 2 version forever?

https://wiki.gnome.org/Projects/GnomeFlashback:
There is clearly written that we need to port to gtk3. I have working gtk3 version, I am using it almost two month. I did write about it in this mailing list. Does anybody cares about it? Have anyone tested it without me?

Back to gnome panel. So gnome-panel now provides gnome-panel, libpanel-applet, applets and flashback session. And we are in need to add other things - for example background drawing application.

My proposal is that we rename and/or create new package - gnome-flashback which should provide all things for flashback session that we need and are removed from gnome.

gnome-flashback folder structure:

applets - all current applets and new one that we are going to add. For example some applets from gnome-applets package.

gnome-panel - current panel source code.

libpanel-applet - applet library for creating applets.

session - session related files? gnome-flashback.session, maybe something more.

background - new application for background drawing?

feature-x - something that is need for our session that previously was part of gnome, but now is removed? Is there some list with what we need that is no longer part of gnome?

Idea is to have only two packages that we should maintain - Metacity and Gnome Flashback.

--

Alberts Muktupāvels