Re: [Evolution] Evo-mail - too many files issue

[Matthew Barnes <mbarnes redhat com>]

On Wed, 2011-03-23 at 12:00 +1100, Nick Jenkins wrote: 
> * Is it even technically possible to just upgrade Evo, or does the whole
> gnome desktop need to be upgraded? I.e. does Evo rely on having the very
> latest version of gnome, or will it run on the previous stable version
> of gnome or the stable version before that? I suspect that it relies on
> the latest gnome, but if the whole desktop has to be upgraded, then it's
> not too far a leap from there to having to upgrade the whole distro.

The short answer to your question is it's possible to upgrade Evolution
alone, but it's best to treat GNOME as an indivisible software package,
of which Evolution is a component.

The longer answer:

The development policy that I've been encouraging for several years now
is that the latest, bleeding edge Evolution code should be buildable on
the latest stable GNOME environment.  That means new features appearing
in platform libraries (GLib, GTK+, etc.) are off-limits until those
features become available in a stable GNOME release [1].

Conversely, any features available in the latest stable GNOME release
are fair game for use in the next major Evolution release.  For example,
Evolution 2.31 was free to use any APIs available in GNOME 2.30.

I think this strikes a fair balance between not forcing contributors to
run a bleeding-edge desktop environment, while still allowing Evolution
to keep up with emerging GNOME and FreeDesktop technologies.  When I got
involved with the project in 2006 we had no defined policy on this at
all, so I think we've made good progress in that respect.

It's important to remember, however, that Evolution is a *part of* the
GNOME Desktop Environment and not just an app that runs on GNOME.  To
run GNOME x.y implies you're running Evolution x.y.  While you may get
away with it occasionally, GNOME is not meant to be upgraded piecemeal,
and attempting to do so is good way to land yourself in dependency hell.

Matthew Barnes


[1] Now granted with the current GNOME 2 -> 3 transition in progress
    we've had to break from that policy during this development cycle
    and require libraries that are not available in GNOME 2.32 (namely,
    GTK3).  But we will return to our usual policy once 3.1 development
    gets underway.