Re: GNOME-2 transition: necessary?
> Yes. But I don't see the point of doing extra work for such a migration
> if the only thing we have to do is wait until RH/Ximian decides to write
> some "update" code. In particular, maintaining both Gnome looks like
> unnecessary work to me. If someone wants Gnome 1.4, he should stay with
> woody. With unstable he has up to date software with all the
> associated pains, if he suffers from Gnome 2, he can write patches to
> make it better. :-)
I see a few problems with waiting. One, the migration methods chosen may
be distribution specific, and difficult or undesirable to 'port' to
Debian. Two, Debian developers may not wish to use the same installation
structure/design as the aforementioned distro. However, I believe there
are already some tools in place to convert old gconf db's and other old
settings. There may be more tools in the works.
> Personally i'm not interested in that. Unstable is expected to have
> problems. I'm just interested in painless upgrade within stable (ie
> between real releases like potato -> woody).
The actual transition to GNOME 2.0 from 1.4 is almost impossible to do
cleanly. GNOME 2.0 represents a major revision change which is not
backwards compatible with older GNOME software, and is completely
incompatible with the 1.4 desktop environment. This alone shows that we
should treat the two separately. Clobbering parts of GNOME 1.4 in unstable
will create major headaches for GNOME developers using 1.4 while they try
to work on moving packages and applications to the new environment. Case
in point, Anjuta has not been moved to GNOME 2.0 and will break if you
upgrade some of its dependencies.
I agree with the earlier recommendation that we place all GNOME 2.0
apps/bins/libs in experimental while we work on getting a fully functional
GNOME 2.0 suite running. The remaining GNOME 1.4 in unstable will provide
an effective starting point for developing an effective transition. It
will also save people a lot of headaches.
On a separate note, the GNOME 2.0 suite by no means runs better on old
hardware than the GNOME 1.4 suite. Nautilus alone causes my older machines
to choke horribly. I can't imagine the kind of slowdown the new font
rendering would cause.
BTW, when was sarge selected for the next pseudonym for testing? I somehow
missed that.
Happy Trials,
Matthew McGuire
~What we see as Truth is often Collective Speculation
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