Minutes of the meeting (2006-07-31)

["Elijah Newren" <newren gmail com>]

Here are the minutes from today's meeting.  Let me know if I've made
any errors.  I also composed a preliminary announcement of the new
modules for devel-announce-list, which I'll attach.  Please read over
and feel free to suggest any changes in wording (especially in regards
to the tomboy/dbus# issue).

Attendance:
===========
Frédéric Crozat
Federico Mena-Quintero  (kind of...)
John Palmieri
Elijah Newren
Vincent Untz

Missing:
========
Jeff Waugh
Kjartan Maraas


Agenda:
=======

+ whether to accept gtk# apps in the desktop (related to next item)
+ new module decisions
+ do we have anyone on the line for writing release notes?
+ replacement for luis
+ getting a schedule of volunteers to handle releases
+ miscellaneous issues


Accepting gtk# apps in the desktop:
===================================

Obviously a hot topic, much like evolution and epiphany/galeon from
previous releases.  No choice will make everyone happy (not even
everyone on the release-team) but most of us agreed that the
following middle ground seems to be the best representation of
community consensus that we are able to find:

   New modules may be accepted into the desktop or admin releases
   with a dependency on gtk#/mono, but any modules accepted into
   either of those release sets without a dependency on gtk#/mono may
   not gain one without going through the proposal process again in a
   subsequent release.


New module decisions:
=====================

 + orca, alacarte, g-p-m already decided (IN) at 2006-07-21 meeting[1]

 + gtk#
   => we agreed at the previous meeting that there was positive
      consensus, but there was a strong concern about wrapping of
      unstable API/ABI
   => agreement that Mike's recent split proposal[2] sounds sane
   => disappointment expressed about gtk# bindings to gnome-vfs not
      being in the bindings suite, but the issue not considered a
      blocker
   => IN, if Mike's split goes through (wrappers for platform modules
      in bindings suite, wrappers for desktop libs in desktop suite)

 + Tomboy
   => last meeting noted general positive consensus, issues with
      duplication/import from sticky notes, and ended with an
      alternative proposal by Jeff being sent to d-d-l
   => migration code from sticky notes seems to be in place
   => Jeff's previous proposals about alternative/additional release
      suites has support from other r-t members, but general agreement
      is that these changes should be delayed (as well as possible
      splitting of the desktop?) until 2.18.  Discussion on these
      proposals should start soon-ish, though, perhaps even before
      2.16.0 is out.
   => strong concerns about the dbus# bindings (John reports that neither
      he nor the original dbus# author, Joe Shaw, think that dbus-sharp
      was a particularly good binding and that it hasn't been updated
      since the 0.3x releases)
   => IN, assuming gtk# gets in, and assuming a sane long term solution
      for dbus# is proposed soon (or that it's removed as a dependency
      for Tomboy), otherwise kick it back out before 2.16.0
   => Decisions about handling of sticky notes applet in miscellaneous
      section of this email


Release Notes:
==============

=> Vincent already contacted marketing-list about this
=> Davyd is okay to work on this again
=> some people wanted to have a meeting
=> Vincent will ping said people to make sure the meeting happens.


Replacement for Luis on the team:
=================================

=> In a recent email[3], Luis wasn't sure who to suggest as a
   replacement but listed Andre as a possibility
=> Andre seems like a good candidate
=> Elijah to send Andre an email inviting him to take Luis' place


Handling releases:
==================

=> Elijah to handle 2.14.3 release today
=> John to handle 2.15.91 release next week
=> Frederic to handle 2.15.92 release in three weeks, with Elijah and
   Vincent being available to help since it'll be his first.


Miscellaneous issues:
=====================

+ Sticky notes
  => mostly duplicates functionality of Tomboy
  => general agreement to deprecate sticky notes for now and remove
     it in a later release
  => 'deprecation' means hidden from the user and some kind of
     warning for those trying to use it

+ What if a binding gets kicked from the release?
  => This hypothetical question was brought up in regards to what
     would happen to desktop/admin modules depending on those
     bindings
  => we hope this doesn't happen
  => agreement that the best way to prevent this from happening (and
     make sure to get things back on track if it does happen) is to
     maintain the threat of removing the desktop/admin modules in
     such a scenario
  => we may want to have some kind of reminder for the bindings
     authors about this committment

+ libgnomeprint/libgnomeprintui
  => now replaced by better gtk+ API
  => agreement to mark it as deprecated on live.gnome.org release pages
  => Vincent to send an email about this to devel-announce-list

+ It was pointed out that we don't have good documentation of the
  rules for the release suites, other than API/ABI rules for platform
  and bindings modules
  => Elijah volunteered to write something up

+ Dependencies
  => General discussion about how the current default-accept rule for
     new external dependencies is causing lots of problems.
  => Lots of support for having new external dependencies require
     approval first, rather than just allowing add-and-announce (and
     revert or make optional if it turns out to be necessary)
  => We didn't actually reach a concrete decision on this; maybe we
     should make sure to discuss this again and try to agree on
     something to announce for the 2.18 cycle?
  => We should also discuss added deps from external dependencies


[1] http://mail.gnome.org/archives/release-team/2006-July/msg00028.html
[2] http://mail.gnome.org/archives/desktop-devel-list/2006-July/msg00709.html
[3] http://mail.gnome.org/archives/release-team/2006-July/msg00043.html

(Executive summary: New modules chosen; scan to near the end to see them.)

Hi everyone,

The release team has completed its second meeting[1] to try to finish
the new module decisions.  And, after all the long threads on d-d-l
and the many discussions amongst ourselves trying to determine
community consensus, we finally have the decisions.

So, let's cut to the chase and present the most flamed issue.  :-)
gtk#/mono as a blessed dependency for admin or desktop modules is much
like evolution and epiphany/galeon from previous releases -- no choice
will make everyone happy.  In this case, it was reflected in the
release-team too -- we can't even make everyone in this smaller group
of people happy either.  But most of us agreed that the following
middle ground seems to be the best representation of community
consensus that we are able to find:

  New modules may be accepted into the desktop or admin releases with
  a dependency on gtk#/mono, but any modules accepted into either of
  those release sets without a dependency on gtk#/mono may not gain
  one without going through the proposal process again in a subsequent
  release.

There were lots of people strongly in favor of adoption of mono/gtk#,
and many people strongly against, but perhaps the biggest sticking
point appeared to come from the fact that the two sides saw a polar
opposite of possible outcomes. ("If you don't like gtk# apps, just
don't use them" vs "once gtk# is accepted into the desktop, everything
will gain dependencies on it and we won't be able to remove it") In
our meeting, most thought that the rule above would ensure a middle
ground and that the middle ground more closely reflects community
consensus than any other possible decision we are aware of.

So, with that issue out of the way, we can present the actual module
decisions, some of which actually weren't very difficult (yay for easy
decisions!)

  + orca
    => full support from the community, even from the gnopernicus
       maintainers
    => we have to encourage orca people to make the migration as smooth
       as possible (and they're willing to do so)
    => IN
    => it probably means we dump gnopernicus

  + alacarte
    => users like it
    => some distributions (will) ship it
    => gsimple-menu-editor is far too simple
    => no issue with this module
    => we need to patch the apps to make use of it (gnome-panel patch
       available)
    => IN

  + gnome-power-manager
    => positive consensus
    => IN

  + gtk# (for the bindings suite)
    => positive consensus
    => strong concerns about wrapping of unstable API/ABI were
       previously brought up
    => agreement that Mike's recent split proposal[1] for resolving
       the unstable API/ABI wrapping issue sounds sane
    => disappointment expressed about gtk# bindings to gnome-vfs not
       being in the bindings suite, but the issue not considered a
       blocker
    => IN, if Mike's split goes through (wrappers for platform modules
       in bindings suite, wrappers for desktop libs in desktop suite)

  + Tomboy
    => positive consensus
    => some issue wrt duplication with and/or import from sticky notes,
       but migration code from sticky notes seems to be in place now
    => Jeff's previous proposals about alternative/additional release
       suites has support from some other r-t members, but general
       agreement is that these changes should be delayed (as well as
       possible splitting of the desktop?) until 2.18.  Discussion on
       these proposals should start soon-ish, though, perhaps even
       before 2.16.0 is out.
    => strong concerns about the dbus# bindings (John reports that
       neither he nor the original dbus# author, Joe Shaw, think that
       dbus-sharp was a particularly good binding and that it hasn't
       been updated since the 0.3x releases)
    => IN, assuming gtk# gets in AND a sane long term solution for
       dbus# is proposed soon (or that dbus# is removed as a
       dependency for Tomboy) -- otherwise kick it back out before
       2.16.0
    => Decisions about handling of sticky notes applet below

 + Sticky notes
   => mostly duplicates functionality of Tomboy
   => general agreement to deprecate sticky notes for now and remove
      it in a later release
   => 'deprecation' means hidden from the user and some kind of
      warning for those trying to use it

***************************************************************************
In summary:
  orca, alacarte, and gnome-power-manager:
    are in.
  gtk# and tomboy:
    are in, assuming the issues mentioned above are resolved.
  sticky notes:
    becomes deprecated, assuming tomboy issues are resolved and
    gets in.
***************************************************************************


We realize that this email won't be to everyone's liking.  If we could
have made decisions that would make everyone happy, we would do so.
However, we would like to thank everyone for their awesome work and
their much valued input.  There wouldn't be such hard decisions to
make if there weren't so many people who cared about GNOME so much.
You are truly an amazing community.  Now, let's make 2.16.0 rock!

Sincerely,
The GNOME release team




[1] Two meetings in a single release cycle!  What is the world coming
    to?  Anyway, for the curious:
    http://mail.gnome.org/archives/release-team/2006-August/msg00001.html
[2] http://mail.gnome.org/archives/desktop-devel-list/2006-July/msg00709.html