Dear all,
The uTouch stack[1] from Canonical is a requirement for my packaging around the Indicators and Unity. I've taken a peek at [1] and decided to package the rest, as it looks interesting. This raises some questions in which I seek advice:
1. gtk+-2.0 - Canonical's gtk2 package[2] seems heavilly modified. Current patches[3], and for Natty is comes in 2.23.90. Currently I'm forced to use 1 patch [4] to satisfy libindicate (requirement for indicators and unity), and 2 more patches [5] and [6] (gdk-pixbuff) for 'proper' generation of gobject-introspection stuff. What would be the way to proceed here? Any guidance/help would be fine to select the patches we really require. Thanks to Dimstar for helping with patches [5] and [6].
2. Unity requires compiz. Unfortunatly for us, this comes with 'glib mainloop patch'[7]. I'm finishing building the required packages. At some point soon everything aims this will be a part of compiz. Unity plugin is to be enabled from CCSM. For now I will be doubling the packages. Adam Williamson from Fedora made a couple of blog posts around this [8], [9].
3. Though I can package the Multitouch software from Canonical, I have no idea on how integrating it... It may be interesting for some. If anyone wants to provide feedback and really test this software, any feedback would be welcome. Feel free to contact me on private or use this list, all works for me.
4. KDE - The indicators at least are prepared to integrate with KDE. If anyone can point documentation on KDE packaging or a couple of standard examples on OBS, will be most welcomed. I've noticed there's already a libindicate-qt laying around. I am already doing some modifications for GTK3, this would probably be also the moment to add the stuff for KDE. I don't really see a reason to cut out KDE users, so this will happen soon.
5. Updates - Canonical updated loads of software. Currently it's broken due to patching required for proper generation of Vala CLI/Gir files. Now here's the deal... I can turn off introspection, but python modular stuff will be utterly broken, and this is bad. I'm currently rechecking the patches applied on Ubuntu on GTK and the tables os symbols to check for missing stuff, hopefully this will sort my issues.
6. Distribution of contents - Vincent asked me the other day if I wanted to push this to Factory. My personal standing on this (as I told Vincent) is that I would prefer to have GNOME:Ayatana as a separate repository so users can do a 'zypper dup' (I will provide the necessary documentation on this covering YaST2 and zypper). The reason why I think this is better is tightly related to the high level of patching required in many things, specially GTK2, I haven't even started to look on GTK3. I would like to know people's opinion on this as well... should I start looking and documenting the stuff that is 'touched' by Canonical and pass on the word so we can support some of their patching on upstream projects? I really don't have much clues on how this 'upstream - downstream' processes usually are. Everything around this is pretty much new to me in all aspects. Any advice?
7. Marketing - I have my own ways to bump this into the audience without requiring intervention from the Marketing Team. I believe I've made already enough fuss around this, and given the present circunstances around GNOME3, I find it a better choice not to engage on agressive marketing promoting this project until GNOME3 is established on the Community, nevertheless, I find it interesting to provide a minimum marketing embracing the concern that it doesn't endanger the deployment and spot light of GNOME3 and gnome-shell. Any advices on this?
8. Broken packages - Currently some (if not a lot) of packages are broken until I fix GTK2. As you all know, I'm not very experienced with this (gtk2 and gobject-introspection), so this might take a couple of days till I checkout all the patches on a 'test/trial/error' basis. Should be fixed as soon as possible.
9. Unity - Unity (without the indicators) shouldn't bring much problems, and by default if the indicators aren't present it will use the default gnome applets. Since Unity relies on 3 libraries to build (bamf, nux and dee, which are already packaged), on compiz (which should be mainstreamed soon), this is most likely something we could included on Factory as an option. Whats your opinion on this? Should we include Unity and ignore the indicators for Factory? (indicators will require a near flawless gobject-introspection solution).
Sorry for the wall of text.
NM
[1] - https://launchpad.net/canonical-multitouch [2] - https://launchpad.net/ubuntu/+source/gtk+2.0/2.23.90-0ubuntu4 [3] - https://launchpad.net/ubuntu/+archive/primary/+files/gtk%2B2.0_2.23.90-0ubun... [4] - http://tinyurl.com/4923qwk [5] - http://tinyurl.com/49cdxfb [6] - On gdk-pixbuf - http://tinyurl.com/4hpsy3z [7] - http://git.compiz.org/~dbo/compiz-with-glib-mainloop/log/?h=master&=swit... [8] - http://www.happyassassin.net/2010/12/03/unity-on-fedora-possibly/ [9] - http://www.happyassassin.net/2011/01/15/compiz-0-9-for-rawhide-fedora-15-tes...