Re: Gnome 2 summary 29/07/2002

[Jeff Waugh <jdub@perkypants.org>]

<quote who="Joe Drew">

> We don't plan on releasing any version of GNOME 2 to users until we're
> damned sure it's ready. GNOME 1 will remain in testing, and if for some
> reason GNOME 2 isn't ready by the time sarge releases, it'll stay there.
> We can upgrade packages in testing via sarge-proposed-updates without
> disturbing the state of unstable, too.
> 
> The problem is that it's impossible to get good testing on upgrades
> (from GNOME 1 to GNOME 2) until it's in unstable, because it's difficult
> for users to install stuff from experimental. Up to this point we've
> been saying "deal with it," but our opinion as maintainers seems to
> generally be "GNOME 2 in unstable." 

That's why I've suggested, many times, that you use *2 packages in unstable
so that the GNOME 2 stuff can be tested *if* unstable users wish to. The
simple reality of a GNOME 2 upgrade is this:

  Before: http://www.gnome.org/~jdub/one-point-four.jpg

  After: http://www.gnome.org/~jdub/two-point-oh.png

That's *our* (GNOME's) fault, but you don't have to push that onto unstable
users. I was especially disappointed that packages were hitting unstable
one-by-one, such as sawfish and gnome-terminal. That's a severe hindrance to
testing due to lack of other GNOME 2 components such as control-center.
These issues can be solved by using *2 packages in unstable.

> (The only part I'm a bit concerned with is that gnome-utils 2.0 doesn't
> appear to contain gtt, which has a number of users in Debian. I'm
> uncomfortable uploading a new version of gnome-utils to unstable (once
> Christian uploads the prerequisites) if it's going to remove a program
> users use. What happened?)

What about the 1.x applets that simply won't work in G2D? What about the
user settings that are not migrated? What about the settings that are not
integrated between both sides when they're changed?

It seems like this whole mess was caused by maintainers being more
interested in creating packages than formulating a strategy (which took into
account the issues with G2D).

- Jeff

-- 
   You know the end is nigh when modern art is relegated to the status of   
                                  "meme".