re. Debian FYI

[Andrew Wood]

Dear all,

The work done to date on the G2 port is great - really. Not only because 
  it carries GNUCash forward on linux but also, it should I guess, make 
a port to windows more possible; so there's a lot of value in the G2 work.

Perhaps all that goes without saying, but it's important its said I 
think.Well, that's my  tup·pence worth!

Incidentally, do you think it would be worth circulating a note on 
various linux programming lists/ academic departments calling for 
volunteers? Yes, yes, I know mythical man-month, etc. I could post it 
out on my local Linux User Group list (- which might make it into some 
university departments)?.

Andrew Wood

16 Norry's Avenue, Oxford. OX1 4SS. Britain.

---------------------------------------------

On Tue, 2005-09-27 at 21:09 -0700, Thomas Bushnell BSG wrote:


 >> 1. People want to know why gnucash is still transitioning, three years
 >> after gnome 2 started out.  That's the big one.


Lack of developer resources. The person who started the port disappeared
after a couple of months.  I picked it up and spent all my spare time
for a year working on it, until I burned out so completely I took last
year off from any programming outside of my day job.  (I also sold my
house, bought a condo, and moved cross country in that year.)  I've been
back working on the port again since January, again spending most of my
free time on the g2 port.  A couple of the other devs have had
job/contract changes in this time period that resulting in having little
spare time to work on gnucash.  You've already heard from most of the
active developers.


 >> 2. People are worried that lots of unrelated development is being 
done in
 >> the gnome-2 branch; that is, that it is delayed not because of the
 >> work of adapting to the new gnome libraries, but because a whole bunch
 >> of other stuff was attempted at the same time.


The biggest issue was that the Gnome1 MDI code was deprecated, and
that's where the initial developer decided to start the port to gtk2.
The new architecture uses a series of plugins, and uses the GtkUIManager
code to handle its menu and toolbars.  That's caused all sorts of ripple
effects for us.  Josh mentioned the forced graphing library switch which
has also been another big hurdle.  Another large set of changes I've
worked on is converting our preferences system over from saved scheme
language code fragments to using gconf storage and using the recommended
instant apply semantics from the old old Cancel/Apply/OK semantics.
There have also been a couple of dialogs switched from a deprecated
GtkCTree to a GtkTreeModel/GtkTreeView.


 >> 3. People want assurance that gnome-1 won't need to be maintained 
forever
 >> in Debian.  They would feel a lot better if there could be some
 >> plausible statement like "transition is expected to finish by
 >> such-and-such a date".  I know such things are impossible, but if
 >> there is *something* that can be said, it would ease a lot of people.


I certainly hope it will be within the next six months, but I know we've
been saying that for a while.  The GNOME2_STATUS file is getting
smaller, and starting within the next month I'm planning to try and get
the g2 code in good enough shape that I can use it for my own daily
finances.  The only obstacle I see at this point is fixing the
completion code and the account selection completion/popup in the
register.  (That's not to say that there won't be any issues left, but
it will be a big step forward to be able to use the g2 code for real
data.)


 >> Again, these aren't my questions; they are those that the Debian gnome
 >> people are raising, because they urgently want to drop gnome 1 from
 >> Debian.  I agree that this is an important goal,


No argument here.

David


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