Re: GNOME xdg-app runtime doesn't follow the jhbuild modulesets

[Alexander Larsson <alexl redhat com>]

On sön, 2016-05-08 at 13:17 +0200, Sébastien Wilmet wrote:
> Hi,
>
> I see that GtkSourceView is not in the GNOME xdg-app runtime. But
> GtkSourceView is part of GNOME core, AFAIK, since it's present in the
> gnome-suites-core-deps jhbuild moduleset.
>
> Why is the moduleset not followed?

The runtime as it stands now is pretty much defined by me from scratch.
I don't think jhbuild is necessarily a great place to start for
defining it.

First of all, jhbuild is typically used to build the entire desktop,
and not just the application dependencies. As such it has a lot of
modules in it that are not useful at all, as they target the "host"
side of the app/host split. 

Secondly, it contains apps and their dependencies. Many such
dependencies are essentially made only for a few apps, and they are not
useful or widely used in a larger scope. xdg-app is all about bundling
such dependencies with the app.

Thirdly, the cost of putting something in the runtime is very high,
both in terms of maintenance (i.e. we're on hold for security updates
to it) as well as users (every user in the world have to download and
update everything in the runtime, even if its not used). 

There is also a cost to app author. If a dependency is in the runtime,
its less work for the app developer, but only if the version in the
runtime is new enough. If its not, then its just "in the way". This in
particular hits the app-specific dependencies that are generally rev:ed
much more often than a runtime.

As for the specific example of GtkSourceView. This is definitely
something I think e.g. gedit should bundle. It always want the latest
version, and they are essentially co-developed, so should be easy to
bundle. Most gnome/gtk-using apps in the world don't use
GtkSourceView, and its not security sensitive, so I don't see how
putting it in the runtime would benefit us.

That said, I hope that in the future the release team can take over
maintainership of the runtime, and for us to have a bit more structured
approach to what goes in it, and who does so. But we needed to have
*something* to start with, so for expedience sake I decided the
details.

-- 
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 Alexander Larsson                                            Red Hat, Inc 
       alexl redhat com            alexander larsson gmail com 
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