State of the FreeBSD GNOME Project

[Jeremy Messenger]

On Sun, 29 Mar 2009 12:53:38 -0600, Joe Marcus Clarke <marcus at freebsd.org>
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

By the way, the DeviceKit is probably the most important that need to be  
port. We already find ourselves to not able to update the  
gnome-power-manager in 2.26, because it required DeviceKit. Fear probably  
more in GNOME 2.28+ for require DeviceKit.

Cheers,
Mezz

> * 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



-- 
mezz7 at cox.net  -  mezz at FreeBSD.org
FreeBSD GNOME Team
http://www.FreeBSD.org/gnome/  -  gnome at FreeBSD.org