gnome15-team team mailing list archive

[Brett Smith <tanktarta@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

Hi Nuno :)

Apologies for the silence, I will try and communicate more what is
happening here from now on.

There have been lots of changes for 0.5.0, some of which are probably
going to affect your Arch packages.

The main focus has been removing the GNOME dependency and improving the
non-Ubuntu experience. It as now at the point where most of Gnome15
should function with only GTK. This has been largely a refactoring
effort, but there is much more too.

First off, the code that handles the screen, plugins and macros has
separated from the indicator/applet. It now runs as it's own process
called 'g15-desktop-service'. This must always be run, regardless of
what sort of panel component you are using. The applet or indicator also
run as separate processes, and talk to the desktop service over DBUS.

A 3rd alternative has also been written for non Ubuntu / non GNOME
environments ('gnome15-systemtray'). 

So, you don't actually need to run any of them, or you can run all 3 at
the same time if you are so inclined!

The Ubuntu packages now look like this :-

gnome15           	- The core, depends on GTK
gnome15-indicator 	- For panel indicator, requires Ubuntu
gnome15-panel-applet	- For panel applet, requires GNOME
gnome15-systemtray	- Uses notification area icon, requires GTK

So, eventually there will be :-

gnome15-kde-panel	- Uses whatever KDE uses

And then finally, some time after that, a QT based Gnome15 core. At this
point, the 'gnome15' package will be split into 'gnome15-qt' and
'gnome15-gtk'. If it gets to this point we really should be thinking of
a new name for Gnome15!

Also, GNOME/Ubuntu specific plugins have been separated into the
gnome15-gnome-plugins package. This currently consists of evolution,
imap/pop3 notifier (because it uses GNOME keyring), Indicator Messages
and Indicator Me. Everything else remains where it was.

The other main change has been an expanded DBUS API. The hope is to
allow easier integration for other applications (say those that have
their own extensions system) and can approach the problem the other way.
For example, I intend to try write a Minecraft plugin when it has a
client modding API available :)

To prove the DBUS API is capable, I converted the notify plugin to run
as a separate process that talks to Gnome15 (it will not yet be included
in the distributed release, but it works).

There will also be a Java helper library provided as an example (using
dbus-java). The only reason I chose Java is it is another language I use
a lot, so it was quick to knock something together. 

In theory, none of this should affect your stop watch plugin (if you
have found the time to work on it ;), but let me know if there are any
problems.

Oh, thanks for updating the Arch packages to 0.4.1 btw! 

I am looking to release 0.5.0 in a couple of weeks, maybe a bit earlier.
The main task I want to complete before release is getting rid of the
need for G19D, and have g15-desktop-service talk directly to the
keyboard. Again, this may affect packaging on Arch as it will require
device permissions are set correctly (i.e. it will need some Udev rules
created). I will keep you informed.


Thanks,


Brett