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").
