Re: EEL vs. GAL

[Maciej Stachowiak <mjs eazel com>]

mawarkus t-online de (Matthias Warkus) writes:

> Hi,
> 
> I notice that there are now two libraries with the same purpose in
> GNOME CVS: EEL and GAL. Both are free and open, but essentially
> libraries created to optimise code reuse inside a certain company (and
> its associated community of external developers), not inside the GNOME
> community as a whole.
> 
> Am I the only one to think this is suboptimal?
> 
> EEL and GAL should merge. Both intend to be some kind of "libgnomeui
> level 2" -- why not go ahead and just do it?
 
Hi Matthias,

I think the maintainers of both eel and gal would rather not merge at
this time, for some good reasons. The libraries have similar purposes,
but they are still both unstable and not API frozen. They are useful
for the projects that use them mainly because they can release on the
same schedule

I talked to Chris Lahey and Jody Goldberg about this at GUADEC, and
they seemed to agree.

What we would like to do is make sure this stuff gets merged when it
gets moved to libraries that are intended for general public
consumption. It's really best to prototype in unstable libraries that
are used by relatively few things, and make sure things are actually
reasonably finished when they go into mainstream libraries.

-- 
Maciej Stachowiak
Eazel, Inc.