Re: Renaming gnome3* packages to gnome*

[Dan Cîrnaț <cirnatdan%NetBSD.org@localhost>]

On 30.03.21 14:53, Greg Troxel wrote:

> I really don't know the answers to the following, and I'm not trying to
> give you a hard time -- this is just born of years of accumulated
> trouble with various software.  I'm guessing you understand all of this.

Thanks for raising these points. I understand your reticence; I don't
like to break things and your feedback helped me double-check.
I probably could have better communicated some details about the new
GNOME versioning scheme. [0]

>    Do you believe that over the next 5 years we will be able to have just
>    one version of gnome-ish things, named simply gnome with no version in
>    the name?  

Yes. I can't speak for the GNOME project, but I don't see any reason to
expect otherwise.

There might arise a need to keep some old versions like it is done for
firefox78, firefox68 and so on. I don't think this would be worth
the effort though. I imagine that users who can't always run the latest 
GNOME have already switched to an alternative.

>    So when 41 comes out, we maybe put it in wip, we wait until
>    someone (you?) decides that it works well enough, and then some time
>    earlyish in the branch cycle just update?

Don't know how to answer this. I'm still new to NetBSD development so
I'm not sure what QA process would be best.

>    It sounds like you are saying that there will be no gnome 3.x in
>    pkgsrc any more.  everything will be updated to a 40.x series.

Yes, because the 40.x series is just a renamed 3.40.x. At least that's 
how Linux distros are packaging 40.x. [1][2]

>    Does gnome have a plan for API compat that makes updating the core
>    while not breaking any even slightly maintained thing that depends on
>    the core?  (Or, equivalently, do you think it's in the interest of
>    users to let anything that is broken by Gnome API "progress" just be
>    demoted to wip as crufty and unmaintained?)

The new naming scheme only affects high-level applications and unstable
libraries that shouldn't be used outside of GNOME.[0] GLib, GTK and 
other core libraries are staying with semver, there is no need to rename 
those.
Unless someone still uses gdm-2.x from pkgsrc, no other application is
being removed or demoted.

>    What happens to apps that are built against gtk3, and the gtk3 version
>    of the desktop library?  And for whcih there is no release that can
>    use gtk4/gnome-desktop/40?  Will they still be buildable within
>    pkgsrc?  (Maybe this question is confused and there is API compat;
>    that would be great.)

In case of GTK3, GTK4 - these should keep the current name. gnome-
desktop-40 and other GNOME40 components still depends on GTK3, in fact.
One of the reasons for the new naming scheme is to decouple the GTK
development cycle from the "GNOME desktop" development cycle. Multiple
version of GTK will continue to exist in parallel.[0]
"gnome-desktop", on the other hand, is an "unstable" collection of code
used by GNOME apps and should be updated together with the rest of the
desktop components.[3]

>    I gather gnome2 is really no longer existing (even though mate exists
>    - but it it is no longer called gnome).   (But what about
>    x11/py-gnome2?)

x11/py-gnome2 and other GNOME2 leftovers, if any, can be kept and
coexist as long as they are needed. I had no plans to touch them.

>    Is gnome-desktop (2.x) a candidate for removal (as unmaintained and we
>    believe there are essentially no users) in its own right?  I would
>    have thought so, vs gnome2-world things use mate-destkop, but
>    finddepends on it prints out a lot of things.  Are they going to work
>    with gnome-desktop 40, at least as well as they worked with the old
>    gnome2 version?  (It may be that gnome-desktop(2) is a separate
>    historical mess to be cleaned up first.)

gnome-desktop(2.x) seems like a candidate for removal to me. Aside from
some wip packages, the only mentions in the main pkgsrc should be
cleaned up. Only GNOME components need to depend on gnome-desktop, and
most of those are already updated to the 3.x versions.

[0] https://discourse.gnome.org/t/new-gnome-versioning-scheme/4235
[1] https://src.fedoraproject.org/rpms/mutter
[2] https://archlinux.org/packages/gnome-unstable/x86_64/mutter/
[3] https://gitlab.gnome.org/GNOME/gnome-desktop