Hi,
Sven Neumann wrote:
> Because I believe that it will hurt the project to become part of the
> GIMP tarballs. It will be much more helpful if we help to create
> standalone GEGL releases early. This will raise interest in GEGL and
> it will make packages appear for all distributions.
Since neither of us are currently involved in gegl development, I
was hoping that we might get some opinions from the people who
are. But given that the conversation has started as a sort of
argument, I'm not sure whether anyone else will get involved now.
I hope so.
> Moving it into the GIMP tarball is like moving GTK+ back into the GIMP
> tree just because we need some functionality out of the HEAD branch.
Not at all. GTK+ lived in the GIMP source tree until it was
capable of being a standalone project. Afterwards, its main
developers were gimp developers. Unfortunately, several of them
followed the path which GTK+ has become to go on to be core GNOME
developers and no longer work on the GIMP.
The point is that as it is, gegl is not a standalone project. It
doesn't seem to me like it is mature enough that if the GIMP went
under (say a few more people quit), gegl would not go on to be a
standalone graphics library in the way that gtk+ went on to be a
standalone toolkit. During the incubation of the project, it
needs attention from us in the same way as gtk+ got attention
pre-1.0.
Looked at this way, leaving gegl standalone is more like
developing gtk+ as a standalone project, and saying that we would
use it when it were ready, while continuing to develop the 0.99
series with motif.
> GEGL is a separate project and it is IMO very important that it
> doesn't become too GIMP-centric. Having it included in the GIMP
> tarball will make it appear as part of The GIMP which it isn't
> supposed to be. What you suggest basically has only disadvantages. Let
> alone the fact that it will be a nightmare to maintain.
I'm not suggesting maintenance. I'm suggesting including
milestone releases of gegl in our sources. Or storing them with
our release tarballs. Either is good. Basically, releasing them
together. Early. Before we use the functionality. So that they
get built, and people are aware that gegl is real software, not a
mission statement from 3 years ago. I'd like to see this done
hand-in-hand with a configure check for gegl, so that we actually
do get people downloading and building it.
And gegl is, at this moment, a gimp utility library. It may not
stay that way. I would expect that cinepaint might like to
migrate their core to gegl at some stage, if it becomes the
killer graphics motor it aspires to be. Perhaps some mini-gimps,
or specialised graphing applications, will use it. But being
associated with the GIMP is not a disadvantage for a toolkit or
utility library. Look at gtk+ and gimp-print.
Cheers,
Dave.
--
David Neary,
Lyon, France
E-Mail: bolsh@xxxxxxxx
