GNOME Version for the LTS
 

Hey,

So first easy one, discuss what GNOME version we will track for the LTS.
It's basically a discussion we have at every UDS ;-)

Cheers,
Sebastien Bacher


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GNOME Version for the LTS
 

Le mardi 04 octobre 2011 à 09:53 +0200, Sebastien Bacher a écrit :
> Hey,
>
> So first easy one, discuss what GNOME version we will track for the
> LTS.
> It's basically a discussion we have at every UDS ;-)

Hey again,

So when I wrote "easy" it was rather "obvious topic for UDS", the choice
is not that easy and I would like everybody to think on going for GNOME
3.2 or 3.4 will impact on what they are doing, keeping in mind that our
first goal for the LTS is quality.

Let me bootstrap the discussion and share some of the concerns I have:

- glib is going though quite some refactoring [1], it should stay
compatible but it change how glib work and could have bug, that seems
risky for the lts

- while we usually keep up with GNOME updates they take some time and
the .0 quality is never "great", .1 tend to be better and the schedule
should allow us to get .1 in for the LTS but still, time spent on
tracking features is not spent on fixing bugs

- new glib and gtk will deprecate apis as usual, that's not an issue but
lead to work on the archive to fix that stop building due to that

- seems like udisk2 (udisk rewrite) should land in GNOME 3.4, having a
rewrite landing in the lts cycle is risky, gnome-disk-utility, gvfs and
some other bits in GNOME are being ported to it and will not keep an
udisk1 backend so 3.4 will likely force that choice on us


Now there are good reasons for going for GNOME 3.4

- GNOME 3.2 is still early in the 3 serie and still has issues, they
will keep improving this cycle and some of the improvements would be
good to have

- we like to have at least an uptodate platform for a lts (i.e glib,
gtk), out of the fact that glib itself is the issue this time

- some users will want GNOME 3.4


Some of my thoughs on the challenges:

- glib 2.31 will likely get support for their improvement "application
menu", which means it's likely most applications will depend on the new
glib, which is going to make hard to update some components only

- if we don't go for GNOME 3.4 it's likely the new version will be
packaged in a ppa as GNOME3 was for natty, that's ok but if we do it
because we think glib is going to create issues it's really suboptimal
to let a ppa ship a new version of glib

- some of the goals for next cycle are to improve the control center, we
will really want most of g-s-d and g-c-c 3.4 I think, we could probably
play some backporting game there or get 3.4 to work on GNOME 3.2...


Thanks for reading and please share you though on the topic, we can
start the discussion on the list to include extra people and collect
extra arguments before the UDS session

Cheers,

Sebastien Bacher

[1] http://mail.gnome.org/archives/gtk-devel-list/2011-September "GLib
"next cycle" update"


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Le jeudi 13 octobre 2011 à 10:49 +0200, Sebastien Bacher a écrit :
> - glib is going though quite some refactoring [1], it should stay
> compatible but it change how glib work and could have bug, that seems
> risky for the lts

Ok, discussing with desrt (upstream) on IRC, he says that it shouldn't
be that much of an issue, the refactoring work is almost over and they
have a good testsuit. He also said they would address issues as they
come. We can probably have an updated package we can run to see how it
goes before UDS.

That would put us in a position where we can upload at least glib and
gtk, then we need to figure what we do with GNOME 3.2 against 3.4. If we
have an updated stack I would lean toward "stay on 3.2 by default", then
we can maybe update selected components and use the ppa for other things

What do you think?

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On 13/10/11 09:45, Sebastien Bacher wrote:

Ok, discussing with desrt (upstream) on IRC, he says that it shouldn't
be that much of an issue, the refactoring work is almost over and they
have a good testsuit. He also said they would address issues as they
come. We can probably have an updated package we can run to see how it
goes before UDS.

That would put us in a position where we can upload at least glib and
gtk, then we need to figure what we do with GNOME 3.2 against 3.4. If we
have an updated stack I would lean toward "stay on 3.2 by default", then
we can maybe update selected components and use the ppa for other things


I am also pro-staying-on-3.2. I think freeing the desktop team to focus
on bugs (including 3.4 backports if necessary), memory leaks, and polish
is appropriate for an LTS.


I think the GNOME 3.0 PPA worked well as a resource for developers of
GNOME itself and bleeding-edge users; so we can repeat that for 3.4.
But I think an increased stability focus is better for the
across-the-chasm users that prefer only-every-two-year LTS upgrades.


If we can be comfortable with new glib/gtk by UDS, then at least we
won't be holding back updates in universe packages during the cycle.


-mt

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Le 13/10/2011 16:08, Michael Terry a écrit :

On 13/10/11 09:45, Sebastien Bacher wrote:

Ok, discussing with desrt (upstream) on IRC, he says that it shouldn't
be that much of an issue, the refactoring work is almost over and they
have a good testsuit. He also said they would address issues as they
come. We can probably have an updated package we can run to see how it
goes before UDS.

That would put us in a position where we can upload at least glib and
gtk, then we need to figure what we do with GNOME 3.2 against 3.4. If we
have an updated stack I would lean toward "stay on 3.2 by default", then
we can maybe update selected components and use the ppa for other things


I am also pro-staying-on-3.2. I think freeing the desktop team to
focus on bugs (including 3.4 backports if necessary), memory leaks,
and polish is appropriate for an LTS.


I think the GNOME 3.0 PPA worked well as a resource for developers of
GNOME itself and bleeding-edge users; so we can repeat that for 3.4.
But I think an increased stability focus is better for the
across-the-chasm users that prefer only-every-two-year LTS upgrades.


If we can be comfortable with new glib/gtk by UDS, then at least we
won't be holding back updates in universe packages during the cycle.


Totally agree on thae plan as well.
I'll be in favor on a lot more polishing work and getting back to your
backlog instead of rushing this for a LTS. I'm preparing a list of small
things to polish for getting a precise release and I think everyone on
the team feeling the need should do the same :-)


Didier

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On Thu, 13 Oct 2011 10:08:00 -0400, Michael Terry <michael.terry@canonical.com> wrote:
> I think the GNOME 3.0 PPA worked well as a resource for developers of
> GNOME itself and bleeding-edge users; so we can repeat that for 3.4.

it did kind of break anything that used apis that gnome3 broke in
backwards incompatible ways, such as Ubuntu SSO (used by both the
Software Centre and ubuntu One).
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Sebastien Bacher [2011-10-13 15:45 +0200]:
> That would put us in a position where we can upload at least glib and
> gtk, then we need to figure what we do with GNOME 3.2 against 3.4. If we
> have an updated stack I would lean toward "stay on 3.2 by default", then
> we can maybe update selected components and use the ppa for other things

Sounds great to me. It served us rather well in natty, and we can
certainly use the extra time for stabilization. I'd like to update the
core libraries, though.

By UDS I'll familiarize myself with udisks2/new gdu, and come with
some risk/benefit assessment.

Martin
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Le jeudi 13 octobre 2011 à 16:23 +0200, Didier Roche a écrit :
> I'll be in favor on a lot more polishing work and getting back to
> your
> backlog instead of rushing this for a LTS. I'm preparing a list of
> small
> things to polish for getting a precise release and I think everyone
> on
> the team feeling the need should do the same :-)

Hey,

What I have been using so far to build the list of "would be nice to get
those issues fixed for the LTS" is to use the launchpad "target to
serie" and pick Oneiric (need to move those to Precise now the ones we
didn't tackle for Oneiric). If others do the same then we can use
Pedro's summary as a todolist for the team (at least for the desktop
side of thing, then each team member can have a pet projects list)

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On Fri, Oct 14, 2011 at 12:45:12AM EST, Sebastien Bacher wrote:
> That would put us in a position where we can upload at least glib and
> gtk, then we need to figure what we do with GNOME 3.2 against 3.4. If we
> have an updated stack I would lean toward "stay on 3.2 by default", then
> we can maybe update selected components and use the ppa for other things

THis is good news. Newer GTK to me always means at least some accessibility fixes, and given my previous topic about accessibility for Precise, accessibility fixes from infrastructure package updates == win for me.

I also plan to update at-spi2 to whatever is latest in GNOME, as fixes in this piece of infrastructure don't impact anything outside of accessibility consumers, i.e Orca, accerciser, etc.

Luke

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On 13 October 2011 04:49, Sebastien Bacher <seb128@ubuntu.com> wrote:
> So when I wrote "easy" it was rather "obvious topic for UDS", the choice
> is not that easy and I would like everybody to think on going for GNOME
> 3.2 or 3.4 will impact on what they are doing, keeping in mind that our
> first goal for the LTS is quality.
>
> Now there are good reasons for going for GNOME 3.4
>
> - GNOME 3.2 is still early in the 3 serie and still has issues, they
> will keep improving this cycle and some of the improvements would be
> good to have
>
> - we like to have at least an uptodate platform for a lts (i.e glib,
> gtk), out of the fact that glib itself is the issue this time
>
> - some users will want GNOME 3.4

Hi, I've got a strong opinion on this: I'm very skeptical about
staying with GNOME 3.2. I don't think GNOME 3.2 is exceptionally
stable or high quality, or that 3.4 will be exceptionally buggy. My
blind guess is that 3.4 will generally have less bugs than 3.2 as 3.2
was the first release to build upon the GNOME 3 transition. Only this
fall will Debian, Ubuntu, and openSUSE users get GNOME 3 so several
bugs haven't even been reported yet (and some bugs won't be fixed in a
.1 or .2 update anyway). It would have been foolish to ship KDE 4.1 in
two Kubuntu releases in a row for stability purposes. I believe this
would be unprecedented for Ubuntu to skip packaging the latest and
greatest stable GNOME (except for last spring which was a completely
different situation).

There's a vocal segment of the open source community who believe
Canonical is forcing Unity on them and doing a terrible job at making
GNOME available. Regardless of the (in)accuracy of that belief,
deciding to stick with GNOME 3.2 will be a PR hit and we need to have
a very easy-to-understand reason for that decision if it's necessary.
I don't think GNOME developers would be very happy with the decision
either and it's good to keep upstream as happy as possible.... :-)

> - if we don't go for GNOME 3.4 it's likely the new version will be
> packaged in a ppa as GNOME3 was for natty, that's ok but if we do it
> because we think glib is going to create issues it's really suboptimal
> to let a ppa ship a new version of glib

The GNOME 3 PPA on Natty was honestly sort of horrible. Not to say
that it didn't have benefits: I used it and for me and others it was
quite nice to have. It was also good in encouraging new contributors
to volunteer. And I am appreciative of the work it took to produce the
PPA (which of course also really helped our GNOME 3 transition early
in the Oneiric cycle). But it broke the normal Ubuntu desktop in quite
a few unavoidable ways.

Jeremy Bicha

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