On Mon, 2007-03-26 at 08:15 -0500, Peter Van Lone wrote: > On 3/26/07, Matthew Barnes <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: > > > Exceptions to the rule have been made, however, and there is some talk > > of whether it would make sense to upgrade the major desktop applications > > (Firefox, OpenOffice, and Evolution) at some point before RHEL 6. I'm > > in favor of that; it would make my job easier. But nothing official has > > been decided.
Well, for things like the DST problem it's not really necessary to upgrade to a newer version of Evo, much less Gnome. The fix is not difficult at all and could trivially be backported to older releases by the various distro vendors. Heck, I fixed my Ubuntu install by hand with a text editor. It's very uncommon, actually, in the open source world for the maintainers of software to release older versions of their code with bug fixes provided. It is not at all surprising to me that the Evolution developers are not putting out patched versions of Evo 2.4, 2.6, etc. with the DST bug fixed. That's not just how free software works. It's the job of the distro to do that work of backporting important bugfixes and/or releasing newer versions of software to fix issues with their distros. That's what you pay them for (assuming you pay them). If you don't like the job they do, then you should find another distro with a better track record. I realize that people get a bit confused by the fact that many of the Evolution developers work for Novell, which also produces its own distro, and they conflate the work that needs to be done by the distro and the work that needs to be done by the upstream developers. However, it's quite possible (I don't know anything about the inner workings of Novell so I'm not sure) that the people who develop Evo have absolutely no insight into or say over what gets updated in released versions of SLED. That would not surprise me in the slightest. This mailing list is intended for users and developers of Evolution. If you have a problem with your distro not providing timely patches/upgrades to Evo, then this is NOT the right place to talk about it (even if your distro is from Novell). You need to find a support forum specifically for your distro, and complain there. Alternatively, find a new distro that DOES provide the support you need. Of course, we're happy to help resolve the problems you're having, but we can do nothing about whether your distribution provides you with the support you need. > I guess then, from my perspective (being a reseller/integrator trying > to develop linux desktop offerings for customers) I would certainly > vote to enable upgrade of "the major desktop applications" within > versions. SUSE supports SLED for 5 years. It's not necessary to upgrade: important fixes and often be backported. Debian, for example, has a long history of doing this. They have a policy of NEVER upgrading to any newer version; they always backport fixes. Of course there are rare exceptions that prove the rule, but they are very successful with this and as you know, Debian has a very slow release cycle. However, again, this is something you need to take up with your distro support folks. > I do wish evo was a little less dependant on gnome parts ... This is unquestionably a double-edged sword. As I've written here before, the entire reason that we even HAVE this DST problem in Evo is that someone made the extremely poor decision, back in the day, to have Evolution use its own internal format and database for daylight savings time/timezone information rather than using the system's timezone database. So, when all the distros released patches to update their system timezone database with the proper information, that fixed all the applications on your system EXCEPT Evolution. If they had only been a little MORE dependent on the underlying system, in this case, the entire problem would have been avoided. The reality is that duplication of code is rarely the best answer in the long run, regardless of how much it simplify things in the short run. _______________________________________________ Evolution-list mailing list [email protected] http://mail.gnome.org/mailman/listinfo/evolution-list
