Splitting the GNOME Python bindings for Xfce (Was: stuck)

[Murray Cumming]

>>  This is a bit one-sided.  You should at least mention that we suggested
>>  that we lack either manpower or appropriate technical tools to handle
>
> Before getting to manpower which can be a wildcard argument against any
> change whatsoever, you also said it is useful only for very few users,
> that is has transition and testing costs and that is causes bloat in
> Packages.gz. None of which are convincing IMO.
[snip]

I think the main reason for increased modularity is to allow finer-grained
dependencies that are currently not possible, allowing us to update one
part without forcing an update of other parts.

For instance, Glom use pygda (from gnome-python-extras). If upstream
releases a gnome-python-extras with a newer version of pygda (with a
different API) then _users must choose between
- Keep Glom and do not upgrade gnome-python-extras, meaning they can't
have SomeOtherApp that uses some other new part of gnome-python-extras.
or
- Remove Glom so they can have the new gnome-python-extras, so they can
have SomeOtherApp.

Actually, I maintain the upstream gnome-python-extra/pygda, and I had to
actually revert support for the latest new libgda API to stop that newer
pygda from being packaged, to stop Glom from being uninstallable.

I suspect that it's too late to split up gnome-python, but maybe it's not
too late to split up gnome-python-extras, which doesn't offer any API
stability guarantees anyway.

Murray Cumming
murrayc at murrayc.com
www.murrayc.com
www.openismus.com