RE: A GNOME Bindings release set?

[Murray Cumming Comneon com]

> From: James Henstridge [mailto:james daa com au] 
> I would have to agree with Mike here.  How exactly does the 
> inclusion of 
> gnome-print binding in the same tarball as other gnome developer 
> platform bindings make a difference?
> 
> If Mike's C# bindings are anything like the Python ones, then the 
> gnome-print bindings would be exposed to the programmer as a separate 
> module, so they would know if they were using gnome-print or not.  

I would like to create a list of modules (packages). I would like to say
"These modules are API/ABI stable according to these rules". And
"These modules are wrappers for the GNOME Development Platform".

This is largely about marketing, so I don't want to confuse the issue by
saying
"And these ones have this extra stuff" and
"And these ones are not API/ABI stable according to these rules",
With significant non-correlation between the "ones" referred to in these 2
sentences.

I want us to be able to say something simple and true.

> Surely it is fairly obvious that no part of a language binding is any 
> more stable than the library it wraps.

It's not about whether the underlying library is stable or not.
Libgnomeprint and libgda are stable, but they are not part of the GNOME
Developer Platform. This release set would be about wrapping the GNOME
Developer Platform, and nothing else. I can chase you all to follow the
API/ABI guidelines but I'm not going to also chase you to follow the API/ABI
guidelines for extra libraries - the job must be limited in scope or it
can't be done.

You can do the rest, but this release set will not make any claims for it,
and I ask that it should not interfere with aims of this release set.

> I am sure that GTK# and gnome-python would not be the only bindings 
> inconvenienced by this sort of (unnecessary) requirement.

I think the disadvantage is minor, compared to the advantage of giving a
clear message. People do want to see us jump through hoops to do that.


Murray Cumming
www.murrayc.com
murrayc usa net