Re: New module proposal: tracker

[David Zeuthen <david fubar dk>]

On Thu, 2009-10-29 at 22:49 +0000, Martyn Russell wrote:
> > I believe all of these things are (optional) dependencies, not anything
> > part of the GNOME desktop proper. Except for maybe PulseAudio. Solaris,
> > for example, don't use any of this stuff.
> 
> That's not true, we have a few Solaris people sending us patches from 
> time to time.

I think you misunderstood what I said. I wasn't talking about Tracker.
And it's good that the Solaris people are sending you patches.

The point, really, is that Luca was incorrect in stating that we (GNOME)
unconditionally adopts dependencies that are not widely deployed or
fully baked. This was true (and in a sense, still is for some of these
components) for polkit, devkit-disks/gnome-disk-utility, Pulseaudio,
PackageKit and the list goes on. Why do you think it should it be any
different for Tracker?

> > I'm with Zeeshan on this - what's the harm of delaying the inclusion of
> > Tracker until it has actually proven itself to be useful for Linux
> > Desktop uses? (In my view, Maemo isn't a typical Linux Desktop)
> 
> Maemo is a target platform being used by real people just like the 
> desktop is 

Of course it is, no one is disputing that.

> so I don't agree with that argument.

Here's the point: Surely, Maemo, or, rather, Nokia (who develops the
bulk of Maemo) went through the motions of working out why Tracker is
useful and, you know, actually, patched their set of apps to use it.
Including spending a lot of money making all this happen. 

All I'm saying is that we need to do the same in GNOME. This is
double-plus true because GNOME has a much more diverse set of
downstreams. In other words, there are many products (distros if you
like) that incorporate GNOME. Consequently, because GNOME is a lot of
things to a lot of people it's much *harder* to figure out how to use
and deploy Tracker in a meaningful way. I think the recent threads about
Tracker and GNOME really shows this.

Anyway, I'm really not so sure why it's so important for you guys to be
in the GNOME Desktop right away. Again, I'd much rather see Tracker as a
blessed optional dependency (ideally following the GNOME release
schedules) while you work with applications authors so they can use
Tracker to deliver great value and all that good stuff.

     David