Cesar Crusius wrote:
> i think what ggi really needs is a deep breath, and a deep cleanup and
> reorganization. if you download the sources, they are a mess. there
> are sources that don't compile at all, and are known not to compile.
> libraries are hidden in a sea of directories, etc. imho the
> distribution has to be rethinked. as it stands now it kind of scares
> potential users/developers. here's my take on it:
>
> i think it would be better for the future of ggi if a new release
> started from scratch, in small steps. so you could release first just
> libggi and a few drivers (X and framebuffer, for example). forget the
> svga driver and others for a while, and don't even think of XMI and
> stuff. a small and clean distribution that runs on X and the console
> is an excellent first exposure to the project and its philosophy. it
> needs some documentation, but the programmer's guide is not that bad.
> when the release is ready, post it on comp.linux.something and people
> will look at it, believe me. just don't make the other stuff available
> or people can get scared. point: don't show something that doesn't
> look very good.
I agree on the diagnosis but not on the therapy.
We had a similar situation in spring with berlin, when our source code
got pretty big due to new language bindings and extensive docs. What we
did was simply to refactor the code into sub packages and release them
separately. You still can download Berlin-0.x.x.tgz but you can download
individual packages as well (the server code, the various client bindings,
the docs etc.). This not only makes packages smaller, it also enables you,
much as Cesar suggests, to separate self contained and stable code from
more experimental one. The packages can have independant versions, you can
even release binary distributions for the stable parts.
Yes, I think that definitely would help.
Remember: Release early and often...
Regards, Stefan
PS: oh, and holding IRC meetings to get some synergy back into the group
is certainly helpful as well...
_______________________________________________________
Stefan Seefeld
Departement de Physique
Universite de Montreal
email: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
_______________________________________________________
...ich hab' noch einen Koffer in Berlin...
