Compatibility between Ubuntu and GNOME developer strategies

[Phil Bull]

Hi guys,

I attended the "GNOME Developer Documentation and Tools" hackfest in
Berlin last week. The aim of the hackfest was to work on improving
resources for developers who use (or want to use) the GNOME platform. A
number of interesting issues were discussed and we made good progress
addressing some them (see [1][2][3] for summaries). I'd like to make
sure that Ubuntu derives full benefit from this work, and to encourage
people to come and work upstream on some of it.

DEVELOPER STORY

What is Ubuntu's "story" for new developers? That is, how are new
developers, of different "types", introduced to the platform? Is it
based on Quickly? I feel that it would be advantageous to match the
Ubuntu and GNOME stories to as great an extent as possible. That way,
"developers for the GNOME platform" are also "developers for the Ubuntu
platform" and vice versa.

We developed the GNOME story a little at the hackfest. It's based on
five key GNOME languages (C, C++, JS, Python, Vala), and we intend to
emphasise different languages for different types of developer. The hook
into the platform is a set of exciting, focused tutorials (see below).
We'll also provide a "blessed" (but not exclusive) development
environment, which will probably centre around the Anjuta IDE for coding
and (possibly) the OpenSuSE build service for deployment. It shouldn't
be difficult to provide this environment in Ubuntu.

DEPLOYMENT

Deployment is something that GNOME hasn't really tackled before, but
it's an important part of the story. At the moment, I think it's fair to
say that deployment on desktop Linux is an issue for new developers.
Packaging can be difficult and confusing, and distribution channels
aren't always easy to tap into. Ubuntu has been trying to address this
with initiatives like Quickly and the Software Centre app store. My
question here is, how can we get this sort of thing working upstream so
everyone benefits? (A Quickly plugin for Anjuta was discussed, for
example.)

DOCUMENTATION

There have been some nice improvements to library.gnome.org and we're
also planning to relaunch the developer.gnome.org portal. This will
feature a new, up-to-date platform overview, good conceptual overviews
of key frameworks/libraries like GStreamer, and a number of quick
tutorials designed to get new developers to "dive in" to GTK/GNOME
development. There's lots more work to be done on these, but the first
batch is looking good. Ideas/development would be especially welcome in
this area - we really need contributors.

This initiative is still in its infancy but I think that with a bit of
work we can make GNOME (and Ubuntu) an extremely compelling development
platform. I should also emphasise that upstream are very receptive to
input and are extremely keen to cooperate.

I'd love to hear your thoughts on this, and to encourage you to
participate!

Thanks,

Phil

[1] -
http://blogs.gnome.org/johannes/2010/12/06/development-documentation-and-tools-hackfest-wrap-up/
[2] - http://philbull.livejournal.com/57007.html
[3] - http://www.0d.be/2010/12/07/dev-doc-tools-hackfest-2/

-- 
Phil Bull
https://launchpad.net/~philbull
Book - http://nostarch.com/ubuntu4.htm