Developers responsibillity to Fedora Users

[Marko Vojinovic]

On Thursday 29 September 2011 14:55:32 Darryl L. Pierce wrote:
> On Thu, Sep 29, 2011 at 12:32:58PM +0100, Marko Vojinovic wrote:
> > > > Apparently it is already being done (sorry, forgot the new name of
> > > > the fork). However, AFAIK, it is far from straightforward to
> > > > "rebuild and release" it. Gnome 2 and 3 use different versions of
> > > > the same set of libraries, and cannot coexist on the same system
> > > > easily.
> > > 
> > > The challenge then is to upgrade the Gnome 2 code to use the newer
> > > libraries.
> > 
> > Which is essentially impossible without *a* *lot* of coding. IIUC, this
> > is why Gnome3 has been rewritten from scratch, instead of repairing old
> > Gnome2 code.
> 
> Nobody ever said software development was easy or without challenges.

My original statement was in response to what Terry Barnaby asked --- why 
doesn't someone repackage the old Gnome2 and make it available in Fedora? And 
my response was that it is not just up to rebuilding srpms, because that code 
will conflict with current Fedora.

My whole point is that it takes way more work than just doing a rebuild, and 
therefore is not feasible.

> > IOW, nobody will make this happen.
> 
> Then I think Kubler-Ross says you should accept things and move on.

Oh, I have absolutely no problem accepting the new-and-shiny Gnome3. :-) I'm a 
happy KDE user since RedHat 6.2 days, and after the whole KDE4.0 bitching by 
some number of people on this list some time ago, it's a certain satisfaction 
to see the same thing happening to Gnome-lovers now. Some of those people have 
been advocating Gnome as being much better than KDE back in the time of havoc, 
and now the same thing is happening to them... ;-)

I just wonder if the same thing will happen to XFCE and LXDE in the future. 
I'd love to see the reaction of the people then! ;-)

> > So if you want a GUI for Kerberos, SELinux, LVM or network management,
> > you depend on libgnome.
> > 
> > And if those packages do not depend on Gnome in F15 or F16, I'll be very
> > happily surprised. Having a gnome-free install of Fedora is one of my
> > dreams. ;-)
> 
> Okay, then. So in the above 4 cases (not reall "a lot") I would say the
> challenge is to keep them in sync with the newer (or older) libgnome.
> Perhaps provide a compatibility layer?

I think it would be much wiser to abstract out the UI part of those packages 
to make them compatible with Qt as well as GTK, and otherwise to remove any DE 
dependence. Providing a compatibility layer or keeping them in sync with 
libgnome would be patching up a wrong solution to the problem, not to mention 
the wasted coding effort.

Best, :-)
Marko