HEADS UP: Dropping support for GNOME on FreeBSD 4.X

Tue May 17 23:38:26 PDT 2005

Now that I have your attention, let me elaborate.  By an overwhelming
majority, the FreeBSD GNOME team has elected to drop support for GNOME
on FreeBSD 4.X starting with GNOME 2.12 (including the 2.11 development
snapshots).

What does this mean?  The GNOME Desktop will no longer be tested to
build and run on FreeBSD 4.X machines.  Bug reports concerning the GNOME
Desktop will be summarily closed*.  There will no longer be any
Tinderbox packages built for GNOME on FreeBSD 4.X.

Why have we come to this decision?  FreeBSD 4.X is dead, development
wise.  There will never be another 4.X release.  New library functions,
APIs, etc. needed for some of the cutting-edge desktop features
forthcoming in GNOME are not present (nor will ever be present) on
FreeBSD 4.X.  More and more ports break with GCC 2.x.  Finally, FreeBSD
6.0 is right around the corner (it will be released before 5.5).  By the
time GNOME 2.12 is released, we will have at least FreeBSD 5.3, 5.4, and
6.0 as "stable" desktop releases (6.0 may be early adopter, but I have a
feeling many people will migrate to it).

What about GNOME 2.10?  GNOME 2.10 will continue to be supported on
FreeBSD 4.10, 4.11, and 4-STABLE until GNOME 2.12 is released on
September 7, 2005 (release date subject to change).

[*] Bug reports will be entertained on a per-port basis.  Some ports may
continue to see life on 4.X provided they build and are functional.
This will be left up to the maintainer's discretion, of course.

Joe

-- 
Joe Marcus Clarke
FreeBSD GNOME Team      ::      gnome at FreeBSD.org
FreeNode / #freebsd-gnome
http://www.FreeBSD.org/gnome
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