Gnome2 -> Gnome3 - no way

[a jenisch]

Hi,

In the process of upgrading one of my systems (FreeBSD amd64,
9.3-STABLE) I came across the update from gnome2 to gnome 3.
The corresponding entry in /usr/ports/UPDATING says

---------- < cut here > ----------

20141119:
  AFFECTS: users of x11/gnome2, graphics/clutter and lang/vala
...
  Make a list of the installed ports:
  # pkg info > ~/installed-ports-list

  Delete the old and conflicting packages:
  # pkg delete clutter gnome-utils gnome-panel gnome-keyring vala-vapigen \
      guile gcalctool gnome-media libgnomekbd gnome-themes at-spi
  # pkg delete gnome-screensaver gnome-applets bug-buddy \
      evolution-exchange evolution-webcal gnome-system-tools \
      seahorse-plugins gnome-control-center
  For package users the following lines will be enough:
  # pkg upgrade
  # pkg install gnome3

  For ports users should do the following:
  # portmaster -a
  # portmaster x11/gnome3

---------- < cut here > ----------

Up to and including the "pkg delete" entries everything went OK.

But when I tried to do a "pkg install gnome3" I only got

# pkg install gnome3
Updating FreeBSD repository catalogue...
FreeBSD repository is up-to-date.
All repositories are up-to-date.
pkg: No packages available to install matching 'gnome3' have been
found in the repositories
#

The only gnome3-related thing that seems to be available as package
seems to be "gnome3-lite" which clearly is not the full gnome3.

Even though I normally use portupgrade for upgrading my ports I tried
to run the two portmaster commands given in "UPDATING" but again this
didn't work.

Just out of curiosity I went and installed a fresh 10.1 System and
tried to do a "pkg install gnome3" there - again gnome3 couldn't be
found as a package; so this seems to be a more general issue.



So here are my questions:

o) Has anybody else out there experienced similar issues in upgrading
from gnome2 to gnome3?

o) How can I get gnome3 on my system again?

o) AFAIK gnome3 is a supported desktop environment under FreeBSD (?).
Are there, besides KDE which I don't like for personal reasons, any
reasonable alternatives providing similar features like Gnome?

Thanks much in advance for your help,
-ewald