State of the FreeBSD GNOME Project

[Joe Marcus Clarke]

On Sun, 2009-03-29 at 18:01 -0400, Chuck Robey wrote:
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> Joe Marcus Clarke wrote:
> > As some of you may have already figured out, the news is not good.  The
> > number of active team members has dwindled due to various Real Life time
> > constraints.  Even my own time is becoming strained due to obligations
> > at work.  We find ourselves facing a rise in difficulty when it comes to
> > porting GNOME.  Hal is being replaced in part by DeviceKit which is
> > currently very Linux-specific.  Hal itself needs some updates.  The
> > system tools don't really work on FreeBSD.  We could use a
> > NetworkManager port (may happen in this SoC go around).
> > 
> > We're also spread pretty thin when it comes to expertise in the number
> > of ports we maintain.  While we require a working Gecko backend, none of
> > us have the desire or drive to maintain the various ports.  We
> > desperately need help.  We need people to step up, and start working on
> > ports and helping with development branch porting.  But more
> > importantly, we need people to take the reins on "hard" projects like
> > those listed above.  If GNOME is to survive on FreeBSD, we need new
> > blood.
> > 
> > So here's the short list.  What do you want to do?
> > 
> > * Help port GNOME 2.27 and its external dependencies (when GNOME 2.27
> > development starts)
> > 
> > * Port and maintain DeviceKit and DeviceKit-power
> > 
> > * Fix and maintain sysutils/system-tools-backends
> > 
> > * Add kern.geom.confxml support to hal to fix the
> > no-space-in-volume-label problem
> > 
> > * Assume maintainership of Gecko ports
> > 
> > * Make libxul (aka xulrunner-1.9) work for building ports like epiphany
> > and yelp
> > 
> > Joe
> 
> 2 items affect me, in contributing to ports:
> 
> (1) there seems to be no list of ports to do, and no signup list for those
> ports.  This is 2 things, the list, and being able to reserve the work.  If it
> DOES exist, could someone point me at it?

What I listed IS the list.  If you want to sign up for one of these,
just reply.  

> 
> (2) I have longstanding philosophical problems with the direction of ports,
> which (while it stops me from wanting to write any more ports) it wouldn't stop
> me from making a set of diffs that would make the building of a port a lot more
> painless.  Would this be of help?  I could supply the non-ports part (any diffs
> I needed to make) if someone else would care to do the ports Makefile parts.  I
> just don't want to actually code up FreeBSD ports again, but I think that both
> the KDE and Gnome work you guys do is very impressive.
> 
> Understand, I don't want to bend anyone's ear about my disagreements with Ports
> (I was able to do that to my complete satisfaction some years ago,  since
> everyone was so polite and reasonable, to let me get my opinions across then, I
> feel bound never to raise the subject again.)  I just needed to make clear the
> reason why I won't make ports anymore, so I could maybe get a chance to help you
> folks without violating my own rules.

Diffs to code is fine.  For example, if you're good with Perl mad want
to update system-tools-backends, do it.  The porting bits are generally
easy to do, especially for existing ports.

Joe

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