[maemo-developers] Community widgets for Fremantle

[From: Andrew Flegg]

On Wed, Sep 30, 2009 at 05:25,  <quim.gil at nokia.com> wrote:
>>
>> Is there any reason to suspect that the situation will be different
>> with Fremantle once Maemo Devices is pushing for Harmattan?
>
> Yes, there are reasons that come to mind:
>
> - Hildon is a library. [...]
> - App Manager Diablo [is not comparable]
> - It is clear that Hildon must go upstream around GNOME and GTK+ [...]
> - The Maemo team has learned a thing or to, thanks to many factors [...]

Good reasons. I hope we can test them at some point.

> I hope you can keep all Hildon contributions around the Hildon trunk
> repository and within one real project. Hildon needs all the community
> interest and support concentrated in one point. Spreading energies can be
> too expensive. Like Claudio says, if the problem is the distribution then
> let's concentrate on the root of the real problem while developing code
> and features in the optimal way.

Agreed. I'm not sure distribution is the *whole* problem though. Let's
assume Nokia are willing to ship an updated libhildon, Maemo Updates
are scheduled and planned - they're not going to be as frequently as
an additional library (libhildon-extras, say) can be shipped. This
exposes the following problems:

  * Community testing of the new widgets becomes harder.

  * Shipping a new app which has been the spur for developing a new
    widget becomes blocked on to a future SSI.

  * Reuse of a new widget developed for app A in an existing app, B,
    also becomes slower.

Given the speed around which the colour picker discussions settled
down, and the fact it will iterate quickly once actually being used in
a real world app, I can't imagine working in upstream libhildon *and
then waiting for Nokia to ship that update* (assuming that it is
shipped at all) will be very effective at all. Unless I'm missing
something and Nokia aren't just willing to ship a libhildon update,
but you're willing to ship one when "we" (i.e. the widget developers
and libhildon maintainers) ask.

Cheers,

Andrew

-- 
Andrew Flegg -- mailto:andrew at bleb.org  |  http://www.bleb.org/