Re: Next stable release?

[Fred Kiefer]

I would prefer not to deprecate xlib. There still are environments where 
it is better working then the cairo backend. For the moment I would 
still recomment art as the standard backend while still planing to have 
cairo as the main backend for the future. The cairo library is still 
changing too fast to have a stable target to aim at.

At the moment I am updating my second (virtual) Linux system to Ubuntu 
8.04, this should include the latest cairo and with that I should be 
able to reproduce the cairo 1.6.4 issue. This would allow for a GNUstep 
stable release by the end of next week. Leaving some time to test 
Richards huge change.

Fred

Gregory John Casamento wrote:
> I'm not sure, but I defer to Fred's judgement entirely on this.
>
> But my opinion is that If we do deprecate it, it should not be removed for a 
> while.  The reason is that the xlib/x11 backend is a good fallback position to 
> have when all else fails.   Additionally, on older machines, the xlib backend 
> is the only thing that's useful since the art and/or cairo backends may be 
> somewhat slow on them.
>
> Later, GC
>
>  Gregory Casamento -- Principal Consultant - OLC, Inc 
> # GNUstep Chief Maintainer
>
>
> ----- Original Message ----
> From: David Chisnall <address@hidden>
> To: Fred Kiefer <address@hidden>
> Cc: address@hidden; Richard Frith-Macdonald <address@hidden>; address@hidden
> Sent: Friday, June 6, 2008 7:20:33 AM
> Subject: Re: Next stable release?
>
> On 6 Jun 2008, at 09:05, Fred Kiefer wrote:
>
> > Richard Frith-Macdonald wrote:
> > > On 5 Jun 2008, at 20:11, address@hidden wrote:
> > > > Following on David's email,  It's been over a year since we last  
> > > > branched a stable release.  Should we try to do another one soon?
> > > I guess so.
> > > I really wanted to get base much more compatible with the latest  
> > > MacOS-X before doing another stable release, but I just haven't had  
> > > the time to do any real work on that, so realistically it's not  
> > > worth waiting.
> > > I don't see any reason at all not to make a new stable release of  
> > > gui/back, but perhaps Fred knows differently.
> > A new stable release is fine for me. I think the current code is far  
> > better then the 0.12 release and I don't see any mayor  
> > incompatibility change coming up in the near future.
> > There is one thing I should do before a new back release, that is  
> > test with cairo 1.6.4 to see how to avoid the black bars that have  
> > been reported. I hope to do this on the weekend, after that a  
> > release should be possible.
> > Just one more question: Are we all confident that the big changes I  
> > made to NSWindow and GSLayoutManager are now stable enough? They  
> > work perfectly for me, but that isn't a real test.
>
> Can we officially deprecate the x11 back end in this release and  
> recommend Cairo?  The OpenBSD package, for example, uses the x11 back  
> end and I don't think this gives people the best impression of  
> GNUstep.  I've been using Cairo since AlpenStep last year and after  
> Fred fixed a few bugs about a month later I've had no problems with it  
> at all.