Re: Module semi-proposal: gnome-shell

[Sandy Armstrong <sanfordarmstrong gmail com>]

On Thu, Nov 5, 2009 at 4:45 AM, Emmanuele Bassi <ebassi gmail com> wrote:
> all in all, this whole digression on the scripting language smells an
> awful lot of bikeshedding to me. if the Shell had been written in Python
> we would have had the same arguments on d-d-l - emails of pure vapor and
> a Shell that trawled the disk loading hundreds of unused modules on
> startup, taking 60 seconds just to load.
>
> the Shell has *already* been written in JS. unless you (and by "you" I
> mean anyone, not specifically you Jamie) are willing to port it all to
> Python or C# or Genie or COBOL (to which I suggest to JFDI) discussing
> the language of choice is pure bikeshedding.

Well I don't think that's necessarily true.  If gnome-shell is
accepted, it implies that extending the shell (probably a more common
activity than extending other GNOME desktop components) will require
writing javascript, which is kind of new for this developer community.

I actually think introducing javascript is a great idea (I agreed with
a lot of the logic behind creating Pyro), and that the choice of
language should be taken as an argument in favor of accepting
gnome-shell (based on all the reasons you, Owen, and others have
brought up).

But I don't agree that this is tangent necessarily bikeshedding,
because it has an important impact on our desktop, especially when it
comes to extending/customizing the shell.

Sandy