On 12-10-20 06:01 PM, Lex Trotman wrote:
Reply from Clement:
"Regarding the default text editor, I've read the emails on the mailing list with interest. From our point of view, it wouldn't need to change much. Typically we're looking at a generic unbranded "text editor" that works great and is lightweight. Geany fits the bill nicely, pluma also to a lesser extent. There's two different kinds of users at play here, so I wouldn't like not having the full geany in the repositories (i.e. patching geany and dumbing it down by configuration wouldn't be a good solution for all devs using it out there), but I also wouldn't like to have geany itself, as a dev tool, installed by default, since it's a power tool most users wouldn't use (similarly we don't install tools like dconf-editor, remmina..etc..).
Cinnamon is a complete fork, we don't need Gnome Shell and it's not going in a direction we want to follow. Geany is different, it's something that works which we'd love to have a slightly different version of, in supplement to geany itself.
If we were to fork Geany, we wouldn't deviate from it. Basically we would rebase from new versions of Geany and reapply our modifications. Codewise it wouldn't therefore be a complete fork, but a deviation of it. Geany would still be there in our repositories as itself and with all features. The deviation would wear a generic name "Text editor" for instance and we'd credit Geany in our announcements (when introducing this change) and in the editor about window. Bugs would come against the editor and we'd only forward bugs to you when we think you might benefit from seeing them.
In essence, it would be as we patched Geany, but without hiding the original version with the patched version.. thus ending up with both geany in the repositories and the generic editor installed by default.
The reason we fork Gnome components is because we depend on them, the Gnome team ignores our feedback and the needs we have and we have no other means to get things done other than doing them ourselves. I'd be happy to explain the reasons behind all this, maybe on the IRC we if get a chance. You can see how Mint is still Mint whether it's with Gnome 2, MATE or Cinnamon.
MATE itself wasn't forked by us and came out of the necessity to keep Gnome 2 alive. For distributions to provide both Gnome 2 and Gnome 3 and for users to be able to run both DEs, one had to be renamed. The Gnome devs obviously decided that the new DE should be called Gnome and so because they conflicted with each others, Gnome 2 had to be renamed. Perberos took the initiative and called Gnome 2 MATE. We supported this project as much as we could. Today we're able to run both DEs on the same machine. We've got a great relationship with them and I personally joined their team.
We're quite a small team but we're happy to help. We understand feedback very well and we're happy to feed ideas and valuable bug reports upstream. I'll try to get a sample project up and running to show you how this could be done easily and I'd love for us to chat about this. Is the Geany team often on the IRC? do you use Freenode?"
I have already answered #geany to the last question.
My 2c:
- The "lite" and the "full fat" version do need to be different commands,
the lite version is for simple use and has to start without options when used from the command line, and whilst full fat could be an option on the lite version, I'm not sure its preferable, a compile time decision makes life simpler. From a user POV two application names makes more sense I think.
Or I think it's easy enough (I think) to symlink some command, like to link "text-editor" to "geany --light" whether using some shell stuff, or launchers, or whatever.
- The question as I see it is, do we want to make the lite version a part
of the Geany codebase, clearly sharing as much as possible. That could be complex if the needs of the two diverge, so how likely is that? That also means two packages, two bug trackers etc. In the end this would be my preferred method if it looks like it will work.
If it does indeed come down to just hiding widgets, I think we could offer a way to do that. We (or Mint guys) could have a 2nd Glade file which has the visibility of much stuff set to false. Other way is to maintain an array of items to hide on startup. Both of these ideas were shared here I think. I made a quick and dirty patch to show the later form:
http://pastebin.geany.org/ODwZr/
For distro packages, they could be packaged like this:
geany-core - the full geany install minus glade & desktop files geany-light - geany-core plus the light glade & desktop file ** this would be installed by default on Mint geany - geany-core plus the full glade & desktop file
For people who want to use the full (normal) Geany, they could install the "geany" package which could install the full Glade UI and the regular launchers and stuff. But the default is to have only "geany-light" (plus "geany-core") installed.
Geany doesn't have so much overhead that it's worth not installing the bulk of it up front.
- Or should the lite version be a separate repository with patches
transported between them? Of course needs separate bugtracker though.
It could, and then it'd keep distro-specific bugs from reaching Geany trackers (hopefully).
Disclaimer: I don't know s&$t about distro packaging or this stuff.
Cheers, Matthew Brush