Category: Gnome

For those that might have been wondering where was that guy speaking about imminent stabilization of gnome 2.26, well I was taking some time off (sort of). The Gnome 2.26 situation got a bit better in the last weeks as due to the production of a release media, a lot of dependencies we were waiting on are finally getting stabilized. You can still see progress on bug #263083, closer than ever !

Since I can’t stand working on Gnome 2.26 anymore and since upstream has been kind enough to drop their new almost shiny 2.28, I started doing some QA on ebuilds in overlay before allowing them to move to the tree. Over 92 ebuilds, all of which are not necessarily interesting for gnome 2.28, I’ve currently reviewed 25 and that’s with current 65% of completeness of the ebuild bumps, so there is still quite some work, and don’t expect the overlay to be safe for use just yet.

One last word on 2.26, there will be a migration guide, it’s still getting a few modifications before it all goes public with stabilization but I’m spreading the word in the hope that we won’t see any new bugs concerning what has been documented.

Many of you might wonder what the hell is the gnome team up to for not stabilizing gnome 2.26 yet. Well gnome 2.26.3 is finally as complete as I want it to be in tree (as of a few hours ago) and we can finally focus on writing an upgrade guide and working out a stabilization list. There are still a few rough edges, like the libsoup problem but things should be a lot smoother than earlier 2.26 revisions.

Update: There have been a few users and devs alike who asked me why is it that my status page only shows ekiga-2. The explanation is simple, since I can’t install ekiga-3, it doesn’t show up on the page. This is because of a bug which prevents me from compiling it that I should report with a solution soonish.

Just a reminder that I’m maintaining a status page for Gnome 2.26 work in my devspace. It’s generated by a post-commit hook so it’s only updated when I work on the overlay but it’s generally accurate. I know it should move to infra if possible but I don’t have time to explore that and make it fit for them yet (yeah shame on me). Anyway this page currently shows status of packages that landed in portage already, not the ones in overlay. We’re closing in to 96% which is the usual compliance percentage we reach for each release.

Just a word to let you know gnome 2.26.2 is mostly completely in tree. Notable exceptions are the few packages that I haven’t had time to bump from 2.26.1 and the ones that still requires some work before being allowed to touch the tree, of which you fill find anjuta and glade 3.6.3. gnome-power-manager and it’s devicekit friends will probably enter the tree later but masked since they fail really bad at doing any kind of sensible power managment on my laptop, some of those issues were reported upstream but ignored for the moment.

In case you were wondering what the hell is happening with gnome 2.26 still sitting in the overlay, well, we started moving it to the tree. It’s going to take a while before everything is in tree but it is on its way. Don’t forget to fill bugs if you find one that is really new so we can write a nice upgrade guide if needs be. For now the only issue is the gnome-desktop upgrade that needs a nice message for non-portage-2.2 users but we are not there yet.

Since someone asked on the #gentoo-desktop again when will gnome 2.26 hit the tree, I’ll repeat that this isn’t for today nor for tomorrow but it’ll be soon I promise. I’m nearly finished with reviewing ebuilds. I’m around totem in the status page for gnome 2.26 not counting the items in red, issues from status/TODO in the overlay and split python bindings which should be quick to review.

I have been playing a bit with git hooks and those two files are updated each time I commit something in my reviewing branch. If you are interested in how I do that, you can check the git hook folder in my dev space. I’m planning to add pybugz actions there as soon as possible so I don’t have to open a web browser anymore when working on ebuilds :D.

That’s all for today.

Since everyone’s in a hurry to get gnome 2.26 in the tree as soon as possible, you might ask what you can do to help ?

Until now, working on the overlay meant that most of the information was available to those hanging in #gentoo-desktop but even with summing things for everyone once in a while and sending recap mails or throwing notes in our devspaces, it always felt like somebody was missing the information. So we bite the bullet and imported some README and status/ files in the overlay so the information is directly available without having to search or wait for one of us to show up.

So if you want to participate, please have a look at those files and the clean patches notes from vapier. Look at other patches in the overlay to get an idea of how I like them and don’t hesitate to open new reports (after searching) especially if you have patches. Also don’t hesitate to visit us on #gentoo-desktop if you have any question but please avoid the “when will it hit the tree” as I’ve already answered that my last post about gnome 2.26 status.

In case you are wondering weither Gnome 2.26 time to stable will be as catastrophic as Gnome 2.24, well I still have no idea but for the people out there that just can’t wait, just give a shot at the overlay or monitor bug #263083. Nirbheek‘s been doing an awesome work about keeping everything relatively up to date in the overlay but it still requires a second pair of eyes. That’s what I’m currently doing and it takes some time but doing that in previous releases proved to be really valuable for ~arch users that had the patience to wait for things to enter the tree. So if anything is broken, it’s ok, it’s overlay, we’ll get to it. You open fill new bug reports and make them blocker of the tracker bug, but please search for duplicates first.

In other news, I’ve updated a bit gnome’s herd project page. It now lists a project that is greatly missing from gentoo, a “codec buddy” for our dear gstreamer packages. If you are interested don’t hesitate to come and see us on irc on #gentoo-desktop channel.