external dependency process

[Ryan Lortie <desrt desrt ca>]

hi release team,

The board just had our weekly meeting.  One of the topics we discussed
was the issues that were raised in the recent thread on
desktop-devel-list about the unannounced (by some opinions) introduction
of a dependency on systemd interfaces to gnome-settings-daemon.

The root of the problem is that we lack clear communication with our
distributors on when a decision has been taken within GNOME and that
there is a lack of sufficient "advance warning" on these decisions when
they do become clear.

We used to have a process for approval of external dependencies within a
given cycle.  These decisions were announced in a clear way and
relatively early in the cycle.  This is exactly the sort of thing that
helped us avoid some of these issues.

The board was wondering, in short, if this process could be brought back
in some form -- possibly amended in a way that fits better with how we
view GNOME these days.

The key points of a solution:

 - provide distributors information about what they will need to package
   in a given cycle (or work around their lack of packaging)

 - be announced in a clear way

 - be announced early in the cycle, and not subject to changes later


This is strictly a request, of course.  If it is not possible to do so,
or the release team has insufficient resources to make this happen then
that's a reality that we will have to deal with.

Thanks in advance for any possible help.

Cheers