Projects in xfce repos, ehm...

[Benedikt Meurer]

On Nov 21, 2008, at 00:02 , Christian Dywan wrote:

> Core: Components one needs in order to run a system in a useful way.
> That includes roughly panels, window manager, whatever xfdesktop is,
> the various settings applications, power management.
> ^^ All of those should be stable. For instance, if the powermanager
> isn't stable, I'd rather not see it there until it is.
>
> Apps: Applications that are useful, that really many Xfce users would
> use, but that are essentially replaceable. Such as terminal, file
> manager, editor, archiver, image viewer, media player.
> ^^ Thunar is a special one: it cannot practically be independant from
> Core, but semantically for me it should be.
>
> Goodies: All the rest kind of, things that are useful but not  
> regularly
> maintained, somewhat specialized, unstable.

I haven't done anything in Xfce recently, but you'll get my 2cents  
anyway:

This kind of stupid discussion repeats approx. once per year, and its  
always the same arguments pro and con. Given that Xfce still attempts  
to deliver a desktop environment and not only a window manager with  
nice buttons to start applications, it's really nonsense to talk about  
defining "core" w/o applications like the file manager, editor,  
terminal, image viewer, etc. A default install of Xfce should give you  
anything you need to get started and this "default install" should be  
represented in a common repository (and bug tracker, etc.) so that  
people who want to get involved (few enough already) don't get  
frustrated having to look up the source for these essential components  
first (no matter if they want to contribute code, documentation,  
translations, or whatever). If someone wants to replace application A  
with application B, he/she can do this later, but this is a special  
case; the majority of people (including myself, not just newbs as  
someone will surely attempt to argue) just want a working desktop  
environment, with file manager, editor and terminal at least!

I'd even suggest to drop the separate goodies repository completely  
and move everything into one repo similar to GNOME. That way every  
Xfce maintainer is first-class. Of course, the "core" installer should  
not include every panel plugin (esp. since not every plugin compiles  
on every platform), but maybe a nice set of plugins to get started.

But please stop this "core must not include essential apps" discussion  
and start thinking like real people(tm) in a real world(tm).

Benedikt