Re: Remove deprecated libraries from official GNOME3.0 moduleset

[Javier Jardón <jjardon gnome org>]

Hello Frederic, thanks for your reply

El día 1 de julio de 2010 13:08, Frederic Peters <fpeters gnome org> escribió:
> Javier Jardón wrote:
>
>> [3.0] Remove deprecated gnome-sharp bindings package
>>
>>     gnome-desktop-sharp has to be removed as It depends on gnome-sharp
>>     I've filled bug [4]
>
> There are bindings for non deprecrated libraries in
> gnome-desktop-sharp (vte, libwnck, gtkhtml and librsvg, reading fom
> the moduleset). What about those? This is the bug you filed, removing
> gnome-desktop-sharp now doesn't look like a satisfactory solution to
> me.

Yeah, we would lost the mono bindings here if they do not fix the
mentioned bug [1].
Not a reason, but at least there arent' any GNOME module that is
currently using these bindings.

>> [3.0] Disable modules that depend on gnome panel python bindings
>>
>>     Move deskbar-applet to gnome-3.0 and disable gnome applets that
>>     depend on python panel bindings
>
> Deskbar applet has been made an official GNOME module, it's hard to
> get in, should this be so easy to get out? Did you ask the developers,
> wrt their plans for 3.0?

No, I didnt (will do). But anyway deskbar-applet is a gnome-panel
applet, so It should be adapted to gnome-shell experience (remove
gnome-panel dependency) and / or ported to the new panel DBUS
interface [5]

>> [3.0] Disable gnome-mag
>>
>>     It depends on multiple deprecated stuf (bonobo, orbit, gnome-python ...).
>>     Disable until the port to the new a11y framework is done. (We have
>> a magnifier in gnome-shell anyway)
>
> But we won't be able to run gnome-shell on all hardware combinations,
> or we wouldn't keep gnome-panel.

Yeah, this is because I said disable _until_ the port to the new a11y
infraestructure is done. I've talked with some a11y people and they
said me that is quite probable that the port was done in time

>> [3.0] Build dasher without a11y support
>>
>>     Until It's not ported to the new a11y framework
>
> Do you know the features that will be lost?

>From here [2]:
 "WillieWalker believes Dasher may still function standalone and can
be used to type text by cutting/pasting between the Dasher GUI and
another text area, which is how many people use Dasher today in
GNOME."
"Dasher can be compiled without AT-SPI and gnome-speech support. This
may be an acceptable solution moving forward. PatrickWelche
(mantainer) has also begun looking at calling D-Bus methods directly
to get to the a11y stack."

>> [3.0] Remove gnome-python and gnome-python-desktop modules
>>
>>     gnome-python provide bindings to deprecated stuff and the
>>     libraries supported for gnome-python-desktop has introspection
>>     support on it.
>>     Also, pygi is already merged in pygobject. In theory pygobject should
>>     now be the only thing needed if you want to do GTK+/Gnome coding in Python.
>
> In practise there are several modules that are not ported to pygi yet,
> alacarte, deskbar-applet, hamster-applet, some other applets; did you
> talk to maintainers?

Note that I'm not propossing remove pygtk module, only the
gnome-python and gnome-desktop-python ones (This was the plan since
the beginning).
Seems that the problem here is the panel. As I said before,
gnome-panel applets should be converted to the new gnome-shell
experience and /or ported to the new DBUS panel interface.
For python based applets this can done using PyGI and the gnome-panel
introspection support [3]
Also, I've recently created the PyGIPort GnomeGoal [3] to port the
GNOME modules to the new python bindings.
(and, hamster-applet, for instance, can be run as a standalone program)

>> Comments welcomed,
>
> It will sound harsh but it looks to me like rushing things and going
> towards a broken environment for the sake of dependency purity.

Well, If we apply all the changes _now_, we would lost:
- mono bindings (but we can push to mono devels to fix the mentioned bug [5])
- gnome-mag (but we have a magnifier in GNOME3)
- some panel applets (that we will lost in GNOME3 anyway if they are
not adapted)

I think that this would be a good chance to work in the really useful
applets and adapt them to gnome-shell [6] or port them to the new DBUS
interface. [1]

Regards,


[1] http://live.gnome.org/GnomeGoals/AppletsDbusMigration
[2] http://live.gnome.org/Accessibility/GNOME3#Dasher
[3] https://bugzilla.gnome.org/show_bug.cgi?id=619796
[4] http://live.gnome.org/GnomeGoals/PyGIPort
[5] https://bugzilla.novell.com/show_bug.cgi?id=615329
[6] http://live.gnome.org/GnomeShell/Design/Whiteboards/Gizmos
-- 
Javier Jardón Cabezas