What is the reason to "discourage" website now while I working on it
actively and closed almost half of existing bugzilla issues last
months?
It's a discussion that dates back to ~Guadec 2015 that resulted in some rough designs and initial extensions support in Software, but the the effort stalled as other things took priority (most notably of course flatpak). The discussion was picked up again at the Core Apps hackfest last year, which resulted in an updated plan that streamlines the existing extension support in various tools to a consistent workflow, but only half of it was implemented in time for 3.24, so we delayed it (again) ...
While an important motivation for starting the discussion was browsers phasing out plugin support (which was mitigated by chrome web extension), the reasons for deciding on the current plan over other alternatives are still valid:
- nowadays Software is the goto place for installing/removing everything
user-facing: apps, fonts, codecs ... except for gnome-shell extensions,
which have a completely different workflow
- the website requires an internet connection - it's odd to not be able to
enable/disable/configure/remove extensions when offline
- gnome-tweak-tool has some extension support as well that overlaps with
the website functionality, but it's missing functionality to be a full solution
(no browsing/searching/installing)
So this isn't something that started "now" when you stepped up to pick up the website, but has been developing over the last two years.
I don't think the goal is to "shutdown" it
No, the goal is to advertise Software for extension installation and management (searching, installing + removing extensions, launching tweak-tool for configuration). The website would still be:
- the source for gnome-software to fetch extension infos from
- the place from which extensions are installed (via the existing
D-Bus API)
- the place where developers upload new extensions / extension versions
- the "homepage" of extensions where users leave feedback and report
issues
So basically:
Have a replacement for everything that requires the plugin/web extension and emphasize the website's position as the central extension repository ("flathub for extensions").
