Improving stability in Vinux testing repo by dropping GTK+ patches

[Bill Cox <waywardgeek gmail com>]

I think it's time to remove all packages that rely on any GTK+
improvements I've made from the Vinux Testing repository.  These are:

gtk+2.0
pygtk
synaptic
gnome-app-install

These patches make the testing repository dangerous for Vinux users,
so I'm recommending that I move them to some other repository where we
can park them until the day that we're able to include those upgrades
in Vinux stable.

My vision for Vinux is to bring together vision impaired programmers
from around the world to work together to rapidly improve Linux
accessibility.  To some extent, I believe this is working.  Largely, I
have to give credit to Luke for this, as several of the bug fixes and
improvements we've made he has further improved and then incorporated
into Ubuntu.  Those changes tend to work upstream while we get to move
on to new features without having to wait for Ubuntu's upstream to
adopt our patches.  At today's Vinux meeting, I intend to argue
strongly that Vinux remain an extension to Ubuntu, and to drop
consideration for moving to Debian Mint or any other distro.  The
primary reason, IMO, is that Luke is listening to us, and taking
action to improve accessibility.  We wont get that kind of attention
from any other upstream distro.

However, we still suffer from a lack of sufficient volunteer
developers in Vinux.  With a large enough developer community, we
could patch anything in the system, from the kernel up, and build
stable Vinux releases and vastly accelerate accessibility
improvements.  The truth is, we don't currently have a large enough
community to maintain such patches.  Until we stop using binary
packages from upstream repos, and compile everything from source,
we're probably not going to be able to perform patches on low level
code that get linked into many other packages.  This includes the
kernel, and GTK+.

While I was smart enough not to try and patch the kernel (for years,
it needed speakup included in a big way), I was not smart enough to
leave GTK+ alone.  I've created a lot of instability in the Vinux
Testing 3.0 repository.  Users who enable the testing repository and
upgrade, have difficulty going back.  If they disable testing, and
selectively downgrade critical apps like Orca, they often make their
machine stop talking, and have to re-install from scratch.  This is
because every app in testing gets linked to the modified GTK+, and to
go back, you have to downgrade every package that depends on it.
Because of this risk, a lot of Vinux users shy away from helping test
packages in testing.  Users like to turn on testing, install some app,
and then turn the testing repo off.  A lot of Vinux machines have been
trashed this way.  The net effect of trying to improve GTK+ is that
I've made it a lot harder for Vinux developers to work together to fix
stuff.

It makes me really sad to cry uncle, and give in to upstream Linux Red
Tape.  I'd love to hear alternatives.  Should I call the new
repository "parked"?

Bill