Re: more gnome 2 proposal

[Iain <tigermilk btinternet com>]

(I hate things like this, well, I hate participating in them, because I
don't have much to say, but I don't want
to be left out, cos then I don't really have any reason to complain or
say something in hindsight....or something like that.
Maybe it's just Sunday afternoon,looking for a decent sampler boredom)

> 
> Also, I would point out:
>  - most people use packages

And so don't care about how big the packages are,
just how many of them they have to download.

There is a feeling already that to have a workable GNOME system you need
to download about 20 packages,
whereas with KDE it's a simple case of some big ones (from what I've
read, I've not downloaded it myself).
And although most of this feeling is from the /. peanut gallery, I don't
think you can dismiss them as easily as that.
Well, not this time.

>  - we already have so many dependencies to build say Nautilus that 
>    this gnome-libs breakup is barely a drop in the bucket
> 
> The reason builds are historically difficult is that stuff does not
> build and APIs keep changing. 

And that things have to be updated seperately.
As an example, 
evolution:> ./configure
*Configure failed, need new Bonobo*

Update Bonobo
bonobo:> ./configure
*Configure failed, need new Oaf*

*sigh*
Update oaf
oaf:> ./configure
Wheeeee

bonobo:> ./configure
*Configure failed: Need new GNOME-libs*
ETC.

> Finally I'll whine about build time for a single package - fixing a
> bug in gnome-libs is an enormous PITA, because rebuilding that bastard
> takes ages already. Add a few new big libs in there...


Most people use packages. :)

While I don't think one monolithic package is the right way, I also
don't think splitting everything is the right way either.
I would be happy to split gnome-libs into the libgnome, libgnomeui idea,
libgnomecanvas, libzvt (it doesn't have dependancies on libgnomeui
anyway does it?). I think Bonobo should be integrated as fully as we
can, and personally, I don't care if that takes longer than we have till
some July freeze, sod it. Bonobo is possibly the most important thing in
GNOME and waiting until December 2002 before we have it fully integrated
is just silly.

So thats what I think, although I don't think I've added anything
special...
iain