Re: Integrating extensions with releases

[Piñeiro <apinheiro igalia com>]

On 04/02/2013 07:45 AM, Sriram Ramkrishna wrote:
> Hello folks,

I agree with most of the comment from Emmanuele, so I will not repeat
them, but I will add some comments.

> We've been having some discussions in the marketing team regarding
> frequent (and valid) criticism regarding the availability of
> extensions after a release from the community at large.

I know that this question can sound harsh, it is not my intention: In
which sense those criticism are valid?

AFAIK, there isn't any place on gnome-shell documentation (on
gnome-shell itself, live.gnome.org, etc) saying that gnome-shell would
provide a stable "API" to the extensions. So unless their criticism is
based on a lack for a explicit disclaimer saying that, I don't see how a
criticism related with a extension stopping to work after a release
could be valid.

> We should prepare an image for porting extensions prior to code freeze
> so that we can give extension writers a chance to port their
> extensions over. 

Who is 'we'? What do you mean for "image"? Do you mean adding a new
period on the GNOME schedule in order to port extensions?

> We should probably put a disclaimer that we reserve the right to
> modify some extensions explicitly to make  it work with our release.
>  Given that the license for most extensions is the GPL, this should
> not pose a problem?

As others said, I really think that the best candidates to update a
extension due a gnome-shell release are the extensions writers, and not
'we'.

>  Essentially, I want to bring extension writers in as part of the
> GNOME release mechanism.

I agree that it would be good to make extension writers life easier. But
as I said, as part of bring them in, I really think that if they are
interested, they should be the ones porting the extension they wrote.

BR

-- 
Alejandro Piñeiro Iglesias