Date: 30 Dec 2001 22:22:39 -0500 From: Joe Clarke <marcus@marcuscom.com> To: sobomax@FreeBSD.ORG Cc: gnome@FreeBSD.ORG, ports@FreeBSD.ORG, ade@FreeBSD.ORG, proclus@iname.com Subject: Re: GNOME on BSD: the past and the future Message-ID: <1009768959.65124.4.camel@shumai.marcuscom.com> In-Reply-To: <1009754271.254.14.camel@notebook> References: <1009754271.254.14.camel@notebook>
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On Sun, 2001-12-30 at 18:18, Maxim Sobolev wrote: > [CC'ed to ports@FreeBSD.org for better reach] > > Dear friends, > > As usual, the very end of the year is a good time to summarize things > that happened during the past year as well as set targets for the next > year. > > The past year was undoubtedly the very successful time for the GNOME > development in general of for FreeBSD porting effort. Several "killer > apps" and core components either reached their 1.0 release, or are close > to that point, and what's more important for us is that most of those > apps are now working on FreeBSD quite stably. Of course this would be > absolutely impossible without the great help from the FreeBSD GNOME > community and I would like to use this opportunity to say "thank you" to > all people who contributed patches, bug reports, suggestions and moral > support. It was really enjoyable to work with you and I look forward to > continuing our fruitful co-operation in the year 2002. > > Speaking about the future, there are several ideas that I would like to > share with you and get your feedback on. > > First of all, it is quite clear that we need to move away from the > existing "one person" development model, because the size of the GNOME > ports sub-collection is growing fast, and things are likely to become > even worse when the GNOME2 platform will start shaping out in the second > half of the 2002. My vision is that we need a team of at least 2-3 > dedicated developers with the write access to FreeBSD ports repository > by the mid-2002 and 5-6 at the end of the year. I have a few potential > candidates on the list and planning to start discussing with each of > them shortly. While I don't currently have write access to the source tree, I would be more than willing to help with the FreeBSD-Gnome effort. I've been contributing patches, and have been doing my best to answer Gnome questions on the lists. > > Another thing that I think would be necessary is the dedicated GNOME > packages building machine to test and debug the changes on, because > current bento turn-around times are sub-optimal. If anybody is > interested and has a machine with good connectivity and some spare CPU > cycles - please let me know. I have a few machines I run Gnome on, and keep the builds current. I track -stable both at home and at work, and I do my best to make sure Gnome not only compiles, but runs well on all my machines. I also test against XFree 4.x. While I only have cable modem access at home, I would be happy to lend my machines for testing. I have a 733 Intel and a 933 Intel (Coppermine) with which I do most of my work. > > There are also a number of tasks that are less critical and more > long-term, but they are also have to be eventually addressed: > > 1. Integration of the FreeBSD-specific changes into the main GNOME > repository. As the time goes, this becomes more and more important, > because with each new release the number of local changes and hacks > increases eating up a valuable time due to necessary to merge old > changes into the new code. It would be much easier if we have had a > person with the direct write access into the GNOME cvs repo (another > long-term goal), but there isn't such person yet, so we need to cope > with the problem somehow. It would be great is somebody could pick up > this task, or at least part of it (say only patches for core components > upon which gnomecore depends - see attached list), identify patches that > could be integrated and submit them into the GNOME bug tracking system. It seems to me that this is already happening. I have seen a number of patches that make the FreeBSD ports tree get merged into Gnome proper. I site most recently the gdm patches, and, while not Gnome itself, the recent MMX assembly patches for libpng. However, I agree merging in some of the other portability fixes to apps like Evolution would be a good thing. > > 2. Creation of the website for the "GNOME on the FreeBSD" FreeBSD > subproject. For example we have such website for Java subproject > (http://www.FreeBSD.org/java/). I have some ideas about possible content > of those pages, so don't hesitate to contact me if you are interested in > doing that. On a related note, we need some form of FAQ with answers to > a common FreeBSD-specific questions, because I see people keep asking > the same ones again and again just wasting their and ours time. I have > archives of gnome@FreeBSD.org alias since its beginning as well as my > answers to GNOME-related question sent to ports@FreeBSD.org before the > alias was created, so what is really necessary here is to do > compilation. Again, if somebody feels adventurous enough to pick this up > - please let me know. I wouldn't mind compiling some of the questions. A good deal of Gnome problems can currently be solved by making sure all the bits are current. Joe > > 3. Better co-operation with the same porting efforts on others BSD > derivatives, most notably NetBSD and GNU/Darwin. Obviously, most of the > FreeBSD-specific changes in our tree aren't really FreeBSD-specific, but > instead BSD-specific, so that all parties could benefit from that by > avoiding duplicate work. From all above, it's most non-obvious task, I > still do not have a clear vision of how this could be attacked. > > 4. Better dialogue with GNOME developers. Since Ade's (who at that time > was the member of GNOME Foundation) resignation there was almost no > relations between FreeBSD and main GNOME developers. Again, I do not > have a clear vision of how to address this problem, perhaps Ade has some > better ideas. Ade? > > Ok folks, that's basically all I have to say on the topic - feel free to > follow-up with your comments, suggestions and feedback. Please note, > however, that I'll be mostly off-line during the next 2 days, so be more > patient - I'll answer eventually. > > And last, but not least, I would like to wish to all users and > developers a happy, prosperous and successful New Year!! > > -Maxim To Unsubscribe: send mail to majordomo@FreeBSD.org with "unsubscribe freebsd-ports" in the body of the message
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